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Dante Santiago Anzolini

Maestro Dante Santiago Anzolini has conducted with great success in Europe, the United States, South America and South Africa. His extensive repertoire includes music of all styles, having conducted symphonic concerts, operas, ballets, pop, jazz, film music, as well as modern works from the twenty-first centuries. Mo. Anzolini privileges the support for young composers, and has conducted numerous world premieres of both orchestral pieces and operas.

He has just returned to guess conduct the OSESP, State Symphony Orchestra of São Pablo, Brazil, with the outstanding ballet “grupo Corpo” in three splendid concerts at the beginning of May 2024, to great success of audiences.

Mo. Anzolini’s debut in 2008 at the Metropolitan Opera in New York directing the opera “Satyagraha” by Philip Glass has been considered an extraordinary success by audiences and critics, as well as Glass’s greatest operatic triumph in New York, after the premiere of “Einstein on the Beach” in the seventies of the last century.

 

Described as a “stunning young director” (New York Times, Anthony Tommasini), he made a “splendid” (New York Post, Clive Barnes) and “memorable” (Washington Post, Anne Midgette) debut.

 

Mo. Anzolini has worked as Principal Guest Conductor of the Linz Opera, in Austria, where he annually conducted opera and ballet productions from 2004 to 2015, culminating in the great success of the opening of the 2014-2015 season with Tosca de Puccini, widely praised by Viennese critics. He was also Musical Director of the “Teatro Argentino” Orchestra, where he offered a large number of world premieres as well as giving first performances of works by Mahler, Stravinsky, Bartok.

 

Mo. Anzolini’s performances in the United States include the world premiere of Philip Glass’s opera “Appomattox” at the Washington National Opera, where he made his debut in 2015, to enormous public and critical success. He has also performed in New Mexico in several concerts in Albuquerque and Santa Fe.

 

In 2015 he made his debut in Torino and Milano conducting the Orchestra and Chorus of the Teatro Regio in the Italian premiere of the opera “Akhnaten” by Glass. The same year he was invited as a juror for the oldest international conducting competition in Besançon, France.

 

Mo. Anzolini debuted at the Vienna Musikverein in September 2007 in concert with the Orfeón Donostiarra del País Basco accompanied by the Vienna Symphony. He has been awarded “Best Director of the 2006 Season” by the Association of Music Critics of Argentina.

 

Mo. Anzolini has collaborated with artists of the stature of Leon Fleisher, Francisco Araiza, Richard Croft, Robert Levin, Michael Kofler, Frank Morelli, Dennis Parker, David Shifrin, Miriam Makeba, Erick Friedman, Noa Wildshut, among many others. He has worked with and conducted music by composers Philip Glass, John Harbison, Terry Riley, Osvaldo Golijov, Robert Beaser, Lisa Bielawa, Jacob Druckman, Oliver Knussen, Ezra Laderman, Tania León, Yehudy Wyner, Wim Mertens, Nicola Scardicchio, to name only some. He has also worked with stage directors Robert Wilson, Werner Herzog, Gian-Carlo Del Monaco, Phelim McDermott, Tazewell Thompson, among others.

 

Through his professional career, he dedicated time and efforts to music education, to teach young conductors, and to nurture future professional musicians: he has been Musical Director of the Itú Festival, Brazil, succeeding his teacher and mentor Eleazar de Carvalho (1997-1999) . He was Music Director to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Orchestra (1998-2006), where he transformed the orchestra into one of the best ensembles in Boston, performing Stravinsky’s Ballets Russes, several Mahler symphonies, and various world premieres. By unanimous vote of the faculty board, he was selected as Director of the Orchestral Program of the New England Conservatory (2002-2003), in addition to participating as Guest Director of the Youth Orchestra of the Americas (2011-2012). He has offered numerous conferences and master classes on musical arts in several countries.

 

From April 2017 to March 2023, after declared winner by unanimous vote in an international call held by the Ministry of Culture of Ecuador, he was named Artistic Director of the Guayaquil Symphony Orchestra. In his tenure he created the International Festival “Music for the Planet” in the Galapagos Islands, uniting symphonic music of all styles with awareness of environmental protection. He also created the ‘Inter-religious Music Festival’ to unite the various faiths of Guayaquil through the presentation of their musics in the temples of all the creeds.

 

During the global pandemic, Maestro Dante Santiago Anzolini led the OSG to become the first orchestra on the South American soil to begin live concerts, on July 23, 2020. The orchestra performed 17 concerts in that season, offering several premieres to audiences of Guayaquil. Mo. Anzolini consolidated an agreement with SOLCA (society dedicated to the care of cancer patients), to offer online music classes to its children and adolescents.

 

During his tenure, Mo. Anzolini devised and carried out the production of La Bohème by Puccini (2018) and La Traviata by Verdi (2019) -in the latter as addition to conducting the orchestra, he was also stage director, choir coach, lighting designer, translator of the text, and editor of the program notes. As for Ballet, he produced the national premiere of “The Firebird”, as well as the Guayaquil premiere of “The Rite of Spring”, both by Igor Stravinsky, plus choreographies of “La Mer” by Debussy and “Verklaerte Nacht” by Schoenberg.

 

Mo. Anzolini premiered the symphonies No. 1 (“Andina’), No. 2 (“Synthetic”), No. 3 (“Rococó”) and No. 8 (“Pichincha”) by the composer Luis Humberto Salgado, in addition to the Violoncello Concerto by the same composer, with Dennis Parker as a soloist. He produced, corrected and orchestrated fragments of the manuscripts to conduct the world premiere of the cantata “Azucena de Quito” by Spanish composer Joaquín Rodrigo. He conducted Ecuadorian premieres of pieces by Mahler, Scriabin, Richard Strauss, Ravel, Hindemith, Bartok and Luciano Berio, among many others.

 

Mo. Anzolini also created a new Youth Symphony Orchestra in Guayaquil, which he has directed since October 2018 to 2020, with the intention of helping the musical development of young people by adding to a general instruction of a humanistic nature. Finally, Mo. Anzolini created and directed the OSG Choir, which has participated in operas and in all national premieres of music written for symphonic-choral ensembles. Mo. Anzolini has given a large number of educational concerts, including the presentation of the music from the “Star Wars” saga where he taught orchestration to young audiences.

 

As a composer, he has composed pieces for solo piano, large orchestra and chamber groups, having written orchestrations and arrangements of all types of music since his adolescence. He is currently working on his Second symphony, his first violin concerto, and his “Paradiso “variations for piano. Among other pieces he has composed a “Quaderno per Daniel”, a collection of pieces dedicated to the study of transposition. He also authored a book of virtuoso etudes for piano. His piano version of the Variations op. 31 by Arnold Schoenberg, the first and only in history, has been published by Belmont and distributed worldwide by Universal Edition of Vienna, and recently premiered in Tokyo by the pianist Hiroaki Ooi, in July 2015. “Preludium and Fugue Fantasies” saw It was first performance in Rio de Janeiro, and was recorded in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 2015. In his productive solo music, he composed a Sonata for Solo Violin, a Suite for Solo Violoncello, and similar pieces for viola, oboe and trombone. His “Faust” Symphony for Orchestra, adult and youth choirs, two sopranos, tenor, dancers and percussion ensemble, based on texts by Goethe, Leopardi, G. Mistral and the Greek “epitaph of Seikilos”, received great accolades in Guayaquil, Ecuador, in December of 2019.

 

His latest performances include his debut at the Rhein Opera with “Neither” by Feldman, choreographed by Martin Schlaepfer, concerts with the Youth Orchestra of the Americas on tour in Peru and Ecuador, concerts with the Teatro Argentino orchestra, as well as performances of “Il Trovatore” and “La Traviata”, in said theater, “Otello” and “Rigoletto” in Linz (Austria) and Mannheim (Germany), respectively. In May 2006 he conducted the Bruckner Orchester Linz on a tour of Austria and Germany (Dornbirn, Cologne, Stuttgart, and Duesseldorf). The program included Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony (first version 1874) and the European premiere of Philip Glass’s Eighth Symphony. He has also conducted the Matav Orchestra of Budapest, Hungary, in a film music program (Bernstein, Gershwin and Nino Rota). In September 2005 he made his South African debut conducting the MIAGI Festival Orchestra in Johannesburg and Cape Town, in a program that included a performance by the legendary singer Miriam Makeba.

 

In March 2005 he was one of eight young conductors chosen from more than 220 contestants for the “Conductors Preview” (the March 2005 national conductor convention) organized by the American Symphony Orchestra League (A.S.O.L.).

 

In 2002 Mo.Anzolini made his French debut at the Opera du Rhin in Strasbourg. In February 2002, Mo. Anzolini directed a successful production of Kurt Weill’s “The Seven Deadly Sins” at the Teatro Massimo in Palermo, Italy, starring Ute Lemper in the central role, and choreographed by Mischa Van Hoecke.Mo. Anzolini’s debut at Carnegie Hall in New York took place in March 2001, with the American Composers Orchestra, in a program that included two world premieres, respectively, of Tania León and Jin Hi Kim, the premiere in New York of the concerto for the left hand by Lukas Foss with Leon Fleisher as soloist, as well as Schoenberg’s Variations for Orchestra.

In addition to the aforementioned orchestras, he has conducted the Beethovenhalle Orchestra of Bonn, the Bochum Symphony (Germany), the Bern Symphony (Switzerland), the orchestras of Asturias, Granada and Valencia (Spain), the State Orchestra of San Pablo (Brazil), the National Symphony Orchestra of Argentina, the orchestra of the Argentine Theater of La Plata, “I Solisti of New York”, the Klaipeda Theater Orchestra, and the Klaipeda Chamber Orchestra (Lithuania), among other ones.

 

Mo. Anzolini has collaborated frequently with composer Philip Glass, including the world premiere of his opera “The White Raven” at the 1998 World Fair in Lisbon, Portugal. In 1999 he conducted the second world performance of Symphony No. 5 “Choral” in Leuven, Belgium, which also premiered in the United States in Washington DC with the Choral Arts Society of the same city, at the Kennedy Center, in November 2001.

 

His experience as an opera director includes a large number of performances in Bonn (Germany), Bern (Switzerland), Strasbourg (France), Klaipeda (Lithuania). In Europe, he began his career in Bonn, where he worked as a pianist and conductor at the Bonn Opera since 1993. His debut at the Oper der Stadt Bonn took place in 1994 with a production of Cavalleria Rusticana-Pagliacci, with the staging by Gian-Carlo Del Monaco. He also directed, among others, “Cuentos de Hoffman” by Offenbach, “il Guarany” by Carlos Gomez, and “Tosca” by Puccini.

 

In 1995 he directed the production of “La Traviata” in Klaipeda, Lithuania, to a historic success with audiences and critics, and then debuted in Bern, Switzerland, with Il Barbiere di Siviglia. After the success, he was appointed Kapellmeister for the Bern Oper, where he later directed “The Marriage of Figaro”, “Madama Butterfly”, “The Gypsy Baron”.

 

Dante Santiago Anzolini studied orchestral conducting (1987-1992) with Mo. Eleazar de Carvalho at Yale University, an institution from which he received two Master’s degrees (1989, 1990) with top honors, and a Doctorate in Musical Arts (1997), being named banner bearer of the “Music School” for the 1989 commencement. There he was named Associate Conductor for the Yale Contemporary Ensemble, in addition to participating in master classes with Lorin Maazel, Erich Leinsdorf, Kurt Sanderling, and Dennis Russel Davies. His doctoral thesis is on the “Harmonic Organization of the Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky”.

 

During his studies at Yale University he offered recitals as a pianist and harpsichordist, and was a member of the Yale Philharmonia orchestra as a violist and percussionist. He received the only award given to a young conductor at the Tanglewood summer course in 1992.

 

He began his studies in orchestral conducting in Argentina, privately with Mariano Drago Sijanec, of whom he was his last disciple. After his passing, he decided to emigrate to study in the US at the Yale School of Music. Before beginning to study conducting, Mo. Anzolini studied violin, viola and piano, graduating as a Piano Professor at the Gilardo Gilardi Conservatory in La Plata, where he also studied composition with Gerardo Gandini. He was a violist and violinist in several orchestras, studied oboe, percussion, was harpsichordist for 10 years in the La Plata Chamber Orchestra, choir director and founder of the Youth Choir of the University of La Plata (Argentina) , and Director of the Opera Choir of the Argentine Theater of the same city.

 

He studied mathematics at the National University of La Plata, also cultivating his passion for literature, poetry, world history, medicine and languages. Son of Lorenzo Dante Anzolini and Lucila Wawzyniak, Italian (born in Friuli-Venezia Giulia) and Chilean (born in Punta Arenas) immigrants, he was born in the “Roma” quarters, the Italian neighborhood of the city of Berisso, called ‘capital of the immigrant’, which after the Second World War welcomed thousands of immigrants from all over the world.

 

His broad spectrum of interests, encompassing several languages, readings in world literature, exploring diverse arts endeavors, and his science and research curiosity, are a result of the multicultural facets of his birth family -just as the ethical origins of his artistic leadership can be traced as a consequence of his parents’ ethical teachings and work integrity.