SPERANZA SCAPPUCCI

Conductor

Speranza Scappucci is Principal Guest Conductor at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London, a position she took up in the 2025/26 season. From 2026 she also serves as Artistic Director of the MITO SettembreMusica Festival in Milan and Turin for a period of two years. She is the first Italian woman to have conducted both an opera production at La Scala and the Orchestra of the Filarmonica della Scala in Milan, and from 2017 to 2022 she was Music Director of the Opéra Royal de Wallonie in Liège. She is a regular guest at leading opera houses including the Metropolitan Opera New York, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Staatsoper Berlin, Opéra National de Paris, Canadian Opera Company Toronto, and the Vienna State Opera.

The 2026/27 season opens with her first festival as Artistic Director of MITO SettembreMusica, whose 20th edition is built around the theme Harmonia; she conducts Rossini’s Stabat Mater with the joint student orchestra of the Milan and Turin Conservatories and the Coro Maghini in Milan and Turin. She makes her Teatro di San Carlo debut in Naples for Rossini’s La Cenerentola in Damiano Michieletto’s staging and makes her house debut at La Monnaie / De Munt in Brussels with a new production of the same work directed by Daniel Kramer.

At the Royal Opera House she conducts Puccini’s Il trittico in Richard Jones’ production. In Paris she leads Insula orchestra and accentus at La Seine Musicale in Rossini’s Stabat Mater and Verdi’s Messa di Gloria, in Lausanne she conducts the OCL and in Paris a new production of Berlioz’ Orphée after Gluck at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, staged by Ted Huffman, with Les Siècles and closes the season at the Palais Garnier with Donizetti’s Don Pasquale at the Opéra National de Paris.

In the 2025/26 season she opened her first season as Principal Guest Conductor at the Royal Opera House with Les Vêpres Siciliennes, and went on to conduct Otello in Strasbourg, Un ballo in maschera at the Opéra National de Paris, Lucie de Lammermoor at the Opéra Comique and Lucia di Lammermoor at La Scala.

In recent seasons, she has conducted Don Pasquale, I Capuleti e i Montecchi, and Madama Butterfly in Paris; La Bohème and Attila in London; Rigoletto and La rondine at the Met; as well as La traviata in Munich and Berlin, Turandot in Washington, and Lucia di Lammermoor in Zurich and Tokyo.

During her tenure as Music Director in Liège, she led productions such as Dialogues des Carmélites, Eugene Onegin, Simon Boccanegra, Aida, La sonnambula, Carmen, Manon Lescaut, Jerusalem, and I Puritani. Additional engagements have taken her to Zurich, Toronto, Toulouse, Vienna, Dresden, Rome, and Turin. She has conducted concerts in Bordeaux, Lyon, Budapest, and Paris, and with orchestras such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the RAI National Symphony Orchestra, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, and the Filarmonica della Scala.

From 2022 to 2024, she hosted the television series La gioia della musica on RAI 3, in which she introduced major operatic and symphonic works from the piano and with orchestra. Her discography includes recordings on Warner Classics, Opus Arte, and Deutsche Grammophon, featuring artists such as Marina Rebeka, Saimir Pirgu, and Ödön Rácz.

Speranza Scappucci was named Commendatore della Repubblica Italiana in 2016 and was awarded the French Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2021. Her further honors include the Premio Porto Venere Donna, Premio Margherita Hack, Premio Vittorio De Sica, Premio De Sanctis Europe, Dora Awards Best Conductor 2023, and Premio Arte Sostantivo Femminile 2023.