Lorenzo Viotti is the principal conductor of Dutch National Opera and the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra.
Lorenzo Viotti made his debut with the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra in 2018, when he conducted Stravinsky’s Petrushka in The Concertgebouw Amsterdam. He made his early debut at Dutch National Opera in September 2019, replacing Sir Mark Elder in the double bill Pagliacci / Cavalleria rusticana.
Viotti has conducted some of the most renowned orchestras of our time, including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, the BBC Philharmonic in Manchester, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, Staatskapelle Dresden, Vienna Symphonic Orchestra, Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London, Staatskapelle Berlin, the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Filarmonica della Scala. Before coming to Amsterdam, Lorenzo Viotti was Principal Conductor of the Gulbenkian Orchestra in Lisbon.
Talented opera conductor
Viotti has conducted opera titles such as Rigoletto, Werther, Tosca, Carmen and La bohème at international opera houses such as Staatsoper Stuttgart, Semperoper Dresden, Oper Frankfurt, Teatro alla Scala, Opéra national de Paris and The Metropolitan Opera. He has also won several major conducting competitions, including the Nestlé Young Conductors Award at the Salzburger Festspiele in 2015, and was awarded with the title of 'best newcomer' at the International Opera Awards in 2017. At the Dutch National Opera, he will open the season with Verdi and Puccini before delving into masterpieces from the Romantic German repertoire and many others.
Musical family
Lorenzo Viotti comes from a musical family. He studied piano, voice and percussion in Lyon before, like his father Marcello Viotti, finally deciding to focus on conducting. He took lessons in orchestral conducting from Georg Mark in Vienna and Nicolás Pasquet in Weimar. He is regularly invited to conduct some of the orchestras that his father once conducted, including the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, where his father stood on the rostrum in 1996 and 1999. According to most members of the orchestra, Lorenzo is very different from his father in all ways but one: ‘They both sing along during rehearsals.’
Double role
Since it was formed in 1985, the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra|Netherlands Chamber Orchestra has been the resident orchestra of the Dutch National Opera, with principal conductor Hartmut Haenchen acting as first principal conductor in this special double role. Lorenzo Viotti succeeds Marc Albrecht, who bid farewell to the Dutch National Opera and the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra in the 2019-2020 season.
Photo: © Desiré van den Berg