Luciano Di Martino

“…Italian conductor Luciano di Martino made an excellent debut with Israeli Opera. His conducting was precise and controlled, with excellent balance achieved between the orchestra and the singers…” Opera News, Jehoash Hirshberg

A dynamic and accomplished presence both on the orchestra podium and in the opera pit, Luciano Di Martino is highly acclaimed for his intensity and spontaneity, his precision and musicianship.
He studied conducting at the Hamburg University of Music and Drama with Klauspeter Seibel and specialized at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena with Ilya Musin, Valery Gergiev and Myung-Whun Chung.
He has appeared as a guest Conductor with the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, the Mariinsky Theatre Symphony Orchestra, the Israel Symphony Orchestra Rishon LeZion, the Hamburg Symphony and the Novosibirsk Philharmonic, where he led celebrated performances of Shostakovich’s Symphony Nr. 11, Mahler’s Symphony Nr. 5 and Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring.
Since 2008, Di Martino has been a regular guest at the Hamburg State Opera, where he conducted performances of Verdi’s La Traviata as well Andreas Homoki’s new production of Verdi’s Luisa Miller in 2016.
Di Martino has been a permanent guest conductor of the Sofia FM-Classic Radio Orchestra since 2005. His live television broadcasts include gala concerts with such distinguished singers as Kammersängerin Anna Tomowa-Sintow, Ghena Dimitrova, Alexandrina Milcheva, as well as symphony concerts with star soloists Pepe Romero, Leticia Moreno, Uto Ughi, Luigi Piovano, Julian Steckel, Dag Jensen, Anton Barakhovsky and Maxim Vengerov.
In 2014 he conducted Lera Auerbach’s ballet The Little Mermaid, choreographed by John Neumeier, with the Hamburg Ballet and the Hamburg State Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2017 he conducted guest performances of the ballet for the company’s tour to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts with the Washington National Opera Orchestra.
Luciano Di Martino made his highly successful debut at the New Israeli Opera in Tel Aviv in April 2012, directing Mariusz Trelinsky’s stylized and powerful production of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, a co-production with the Teatr Wielki Warszawa.
He was appointed in 2012 member of the advisory council of Hamburg’s TONALi Competition and conducted TONALi’s Grand Prix Concert at the Laeiszhalle in Hamburg with cello prize winner Alexey Stadler and the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra.
Following his debut in 2010, he has maintained a close collaboration with the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, conducting the new production of Verdi’s Attila during the Stars of the White Nights Festival with the young bass Ildar Abdrazakov in the title role, as well as revivals of Aida, Don Carlos, I Pagliacci, La Sonnambula and Mendelsssohn’s oratorio Elijah with the Mariinsky Theatre Chorus and Symphony Orchestra. He also directed a highly acclaimed new production there of L’Elisir d’Amore in 2011, staged by Laurent Pelly and starring Anna Netrebko, a co-production of the Royal Opera House Covent Garden and the Opéra Bastille in Paris.
Other notable highlights in Di Martino’s career include conducting Lucia di Lammermoor at the Historic State Theatre in Minneapolis, Rigoletto at the Worcester Music Festival, Galaconcert at the Latvian National Opera Riga, La Traviata and Carmina Burana at the Thessaloniki Concert Hall, Otello and Tosca at the Novosibirsk Opera Theatre, Onegin at the Sofia National Opera, Aida at the Festival Opera Open in Plovdiv, Madama Butterfly at the Theatre Lübeck and Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute at the Nuremberg State Theatre.
He became General Music Director of the Bulgarian State Opera Stara Zagora in 2000, a position he held until 2004. He currently holds the position of Conductor and Artistic Director at the State Opera and Philharmonic in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, the designated European Capital of Culture for 2019.