Within a short period of time, Fabio Mastrangelo has been appointed in rapid succession Principal Guest Conductor of both the Novosibirsk Symphony Orchestra, and the National Symphony Orchestra of Tatarstan (Khazan), Artistic Director of the Ensemble “Camerata” of the Novosibirsk State Philharmonic, Conductor at the Mariinsky Theatre, and Principal Guest Conductor of the Ekaterimburg Opera and Ballet Theatre. In addition, since 2006, he is the Musical Advisor for the “Fondazione Lirico Sinfonica Petruzzelli di Bari”, Italy’s youngest lyric foundation recently joining a prestigious list that includes Milan La Scala, Venice La Fenice, and Naples San Carlo. Since moving to St. Petersburg, he has been garnering wide recognition as Yuri Temirkanov’s substitute at the helm of the famed St. Petersburg Philharmonic - most recently in a concert at the Tchaikovsky Hall in Moscow and, earlier, conducting a concert in honour of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Born in Bari in 1965, he began piano studies there under his father at age 5. He later graduated from the Conservatorio Piccinni of Bari under Pierluigi Camicia, the Conservatory of Geneva under Maria Tipo, and the Royal Academy of Music in London, where he was granted a Piano Performer Diploma. He attended masterclasses with Aldo Ciccolini, Seymour Lipkin, and Paul Badura-Skoda and won 1st prize in the piano competitions of Osimo (1980) and Rome (1986).
His earliest experience with his city’s opera theatre (Teatro Petruzzelli) was in 1986 as a repetiteur working alongside conductors Donato Renzetti and Evelino Pidò as well as prominent singers such as Katia Ricciarelli, Raina Kabaivanska, and Piero Cappuccilli. Conducting studies followed at the Pescara Academy of Music, under Gilberto Serembe, and at the University of Toronto, under Michel Tabachnik and Richard Bradshaw. He also studied under Leonard Bernstein and Karl Österreicher in Vienna, Gustav Meier at Ann Arbor, Michigan, and attended masterclasses under Neeme Järvi and Jorma Panula. A graduate of the University of Toronto, in 1996 he founded the chamber orchestra Virtuosi di Toronto, comprised of players from the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, holding the position of Music Director until 2003. In addition he spent nine years as Music Director of the University of Toronto’s Hart House Chamber Strings. As a guest conductor he has led the National Academy Orchestra (Hamilton), the Windsor Symphony, the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, the Winnipeg Symphony, the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, the National Arts Centre Orchestra (Ottawa), the Vancouver Opera Orchestra, the Brantford Symphony, the University of North Carolina Symphony (Greensboro), as well as the Szeged Symphony (Hungary), the Pärnu Symphony (Estonia), the Tampere Philharmonic (Finland), the Wiener Festival Strings (Heiligenkreuzer Herbst Festival), the Berliner Philharmonisches Kammerorchester, the National Symphony of Ukraine (Kiev), the Bacau Philharmonic (Romania), and the Sinfonietta Riga. In Italy, he has conducted the symphony orchestras of Bari, Taranto, Palermo, and Pescara, the Filarmonica di Roma, the Filarmonica del Teatro Petruzzelli (Bari), and the ‘Solisti di Napoli’.
In Russia, since 1999, he has conducted the St Petersburg Orchestra ‘Klassika’, the St Petersburg State Symphony Orchestra, the St Petersburg Hermitage Orchestra, the St Petersburg State Capella, the Symphony Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre, the Karelia Philharmonic, the Kislovodsk Symphony, and the Arkhangelsk State Chamber Orchestra. He has been regularly leading both orchestras of the St Petersburg Philharmonic (including a 2003 tour in Italy).
Fabio Mastrangelo has recorded the complete orchestral works of Elisabetta Brusa in two CDs for Naxos. For two seasons, he was Music Director of Bari’s Societá dei Concerti Orchestra which he twice led on tour to Japan. As a pianist Fabio Mastrangelo has performed an extended cycle of Mozart Piano Concertos with the Hart House Chamber Strings, conducting from the keyboard. Between 2001 and 2006, he was Artistic Director of the festival Etoiles du Chateau de Chailly (Chailly-sur-Armançon, France) where he regularly performed chamber music. He is often heard in recitals with the Russian ‘cellist Sergei Slovachevsky, with whom he released two CDs for the Japanese label Ongaku-no-Tomo, and with his wife flutist Olesia Tertychnaia. He made his St Petersburg operatic debut conducting La traviata at the Mussorgsky State Theatre, where he later conducted a staged production of Verdi’s Requiem. At the St Petersburg Conservatory Bolshoi Theatre he has conducted La Boheme, Tosca and the Russian all time premiere of Donizetti’s Anna Bolena, which he has also taken on a tour of Russia (including a concert performance at the Large Hall of the Moscow Conservatory). Last February, he made his debut with a new production of Kalman’s Sylva at the St. Petersburg Comic Opera, where he will also conduct a new production of Madam Pompadour (May ’08).
Future engagements include return appearances as a guest conductor at the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, with the Symphony Orchestras of Bari, and Nizhni-Novgorod, the Philharmonic Orchestras of Nice, Moscow, and Rudolfstadt (Germany), the National Symphony of Lithuania. He recently conducted Rigoletto, and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Night Before Christmas in Voronezh (upcoming is a new production of Boheme), and has undertaken repertoire performances of Tosca, Madama Butterfly, Boheme, Rigoletto, Traviata, Magic Flute, Evgeni Onegin, and Barbiere di Siviglia in Ekaterimburg, (will also debut with Prokofieff’s Romeo and Julia, and Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker), new productions of Tosca, and Otello at the Mariinsky Theatre, Trovatore at the Latvian National Opera in Riga, Aida and Evgeni Onegin at the forthcoming re-opening of the Petruzzelli Theatre in Bari, Lucia di Lammermoor in Minsk.
