Winner of the 42nd Abbiati Award for Best Conductor 2022, Gianluca Capuano has been principal conductor of Les Musiciens du Prince- Monaco since 2019. He studied organ, composition and conducting at the Conservatory in his hometown in Milan and went on to specialize in early music at the Scuola Civica. He also studied theoretical philosophy at the University of Milan.
He has appeared as a soloist and as a conductor throughout Europe, the United States, Russia and Japan.
In 2006 he founded “Il canto di Orfeo”, an instrumental and vocal ensemble with which he performs a wide-ranging Baroque repertoire, working with some of the finest musicians and singers active in the field of historically- informed performance practice. With his vocal ensemble he has also taken part in perform-ances of Vacchi’s Teneke, Raskatov’s A Dog’s Heart and Zimmermann’s Die Soldaten at La Scala, Milan.
Gianluca Capuano came to international attention in August 2016, when he stepped in at short notice to conduct Norma with Cecilia Bartoli on the opening night of the Edinburgh Festival. Bartoli then invited him to conduct further performances of Norma at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and in Baden-Baden as well as a European tour of La Cenerentola with Les Musiciens du Prince-Monaco. He has also conducted Hasse’s Leucippo; Vivaldi’s Catone in Utica with Concerto Köln; Gassmann’s Gli uccellatori at the Cologne Opera; Handel’s Orlando at the Dresden Semperoper; Così fan tutte for OperaLombardia: Idomeneo at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino; a new production of La clemenza di Tito in Karlsruhe; a new production of L’incoronazione di Poppea in Nantes; Donizetti’s Pigmalione in a double bill with Mayr’s Che originali! at the Donizetti Festival in Bergam; Spontini’s Le
metamorfosi di Pasquale at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice and La finta giardiniera at the Zurich Opera.
Gianluca Capuano made his Salzburg debut at the 2017 Whitsun Festival, conducting Les Musiciens du Prince- Monaco in Ariodante and a concert performance of La donna del lago, following this up in 2018 with a recital of arias associated with the legendary tenor Manuel García and sung by Javier Camarena. Highlights from this program were released on CD. He returned in Salzburg for Alcina; with “Il canto di Orfeo” for Caldara’s La morte d’Abel; for Il Trionfo del tempo e del disinganno and Il Barbiere di Siviglia and most recently for Monteverdi, Gluck and Haydn’s Orfeo.
Other past engagements include: Cimarosa’s Il matrimonio segreto and Handel’s Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno in Cologne Opera; Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and L’Elisir d’amore in Hamburg; Ariodante, Il Turco in Italia, Cenerentola, Alcina and Clemenza di Tito in Montecarlo with Les Musiciens du Prince and on tour; Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice and Alceste in Rome; Il matrimonio segreto at the Dutch National Opera; Guillaume Tell at the Chorégies d’Orange; Il Barbiere di Siviglia at the Teatro Massimo in Palermo; Mozart’s Requiem in Bari; L’elisir d’amore at the Teatro Real in Madrid; La Cenerentola
and Iphigénie en Tauride in Zurich; Cimarosa’s Il maestro di cappella in a double bill with Wolf-Ferrari’s Il segreto di Susanna at the Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa; Pergolesi's Stabat Mater in Lucerne; Le Nozze di Figaro and Ariodante in Moscow and Alcina in Florence.
On the concert platform he has conducted the Orchestra of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna in a program of works by Schubert and Anton Eberl. His second CD for Decca, an album devoted to the legendary Pauline Viardot showcasing mezzosoprano Varduhi Abrahamyan and Les Musiciens du Prince.
Recent and future engagements include: La Cenerentola and L’Italiana in Algeri in Zurich; Il Barbiere di Siviglia and Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo in Montecarlo; Semele and Norma in Munich; L’Elisir d’amore, Don Pasquale, Il Barbiere di Siviglia and Cenerentola in Vienna and Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice at the Palau de les Arts in Valencia.
June 2023