Sebastiano Rolli

He began his musical studies at a very young age under the guidance of his father, a choir conductor, and completed them at the Conservatories “Arrigo Boito” of Parma and “Giuseppe Verdi” of Milan. Alongside his studies in composition and chamber vocal music, he pursued research with Marcello Conati and Pierluigi Petrobelli on musical dramaturgy and the performance practice of the nineteenth-century Italian repertoire. He devoted his philological theses to subjects such as Simon Boccanegra and Otello, gives masterclasses and lectures on these topics, and has published articles in the journal Donizetti Studies. He teaches interpretation courses for the Mythos programmes of Teatro alla Scala in Milan and the Fondazione Toscanini in Parma, is a faculty member of the Verdi Academy at the Teatro Regio di Parma, and Academic Fellow at the University of Southampton. He has published critical essays on Giuseppe Di Stefano and Giuseppe Verdi, as well as contributions and short essays in various collections and programme books for national and international opera seasons. He is a regular contributor to the newspaper Gazzetta di Parma.

On the international stage, he is regarded as one of the leading conductors for his stylistic insight into classical and Romantic Italian opera. Specialising in philological and historically informed approaches, he has conducted and recorded, on both audio and video, the world premiere critical editions of Donizetti's Torquato Tasso, Maria de Rudenz, Rosmonda d'Inghilterra, and Giovedì grasso in Bergamo, as well as La straniera in Catania. Former Music Director of the Orchestra UNIMI of Milan, with which he performed Classical and Romantic repertoire as well as world premieres by Maderna, Bettinelli, and Parisi, he regularly conducts nineteenth-century Italian opera at the invitation of major opera houses in Italy and abroad, including Bergamo, Parma and Busseto, Reggio Emilia, the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino (also on tour in Oman), La Fenice in Venice (including the first performance of I Lombardi alla prima crociata since the 1844 edition conducted by Verdi himself), Brescia, Como, Cremona, Lecco, Pavia, Rovigo, Treviso, Ancona, Genoa, Sassari, Cagliari, Tel Aviv, Fribourg, Nancy, Dijon, Sofia, Magdeburg, Tenerife, and Lima. Among his notable engagements with Juan Diego Flórez are L'elisir d'amore in Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto, and Giovanna d'Arco at the Croatian National Theatre in Rijeka.

At the Teatro Filarmonico in Verona, he conducted Maria Stuarda in 2014; La Cenerentola, in collaboration with the Accademia della Scala, and Peter and the Wolf in 2016; and a monographic concert dedicated to Bottesini in 2021. He returns in 2026 to conduct the Verona premiere of Rossini's Petite Messe solennelle in the composer's own orchestral version; in the same year, he makes his Arena di Verona debut conducting Nabucco during the 103rd Arena Opera Festival.

Biography updated in July 2026