Dante Anzolini, Conductor

Maestro Dante Santiago Anzolini has conducted with great success in Europe, the United States, and South America. His extensive repertoire includes music of all styles from J.S. Bach to Mahler to today’s compositions. It comprises symphonic pieces, operas, ballets, pop and jazz arrangements. film soundtracks, as well as a diverse list of popular musics of several countries. He has conducted numerous world premieres of both orchestral pieces and operas.

His two most recent engagements were the inauguration of the Klaipėdos valstybinis muzikinis teatras, in Lithuania, with “The Voyage” by Philip Glass, and a series of concerts with “Grupo Corpo” ballet and the Orchestra of São Pablo, Brazil. His collaboration with Mr Glass includes his debut in 2008 at the Metropolitan Opera of New York conducting the opera “Satyagraha”. It was an extraordinary success by audiences, for which the New York Times called him “impressive young conductor”, whereas the Washington Post published an article about his “memorable debut”. In 2105 he first appeared at the Washington National Opera with the composer’s “Appomattox” -to great public acclaim. He also worked in “Akhenaten”, “The White Raven” and the 5th Symphony “Requiem, Bardo and Nirmanakaya”. His extensive work in opera includes several productions of Verdi, Mozart, Poulenc among other composers -in numerous theaters. He has recently directed productions of “La Traviata” and “La Bohème” where he worked as coach, choir leader, stage director, and general director/conductor.

Mo. Anzolini has held conducting positions in Bonn, Bern, Guayaquil, and Linz. While in Ecuador, he created the “Inter-Religious Music Festival” to unite repertoire of different creeds in a concert series, and the “Music for the Planet Festival”, using music of all styles to highlight environmental causes. While at the helm of the Guayaquil Symphony he conducted the world premieres of four symphonies of Luis Salgado, and numerous local premieres of pieces by Mahler, Ravel, Bartok, Debussy, among other composers. He conducted concerts, operas and ballets in Budapest, Buenos Aires, Brussels, Cape-Town, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Gijón, Granada, Mexico City, Milano, Montevideo, Palermo, Riga, Stuttgart, São Pablo, Strasbourg, Torino, Valencia, Vienna, Washington, among many other cities in three continents. He has recently given world premieres of Joaquín Rodrigo (Spain), and Luis Humberto Salgado (Ecuador). He made his debut at Carnegie Hall in 2001, leading the American Composers Orchestra, offering two world premieres by Tania León and Jin Hi Kin, and Schoenberg’s Variations. He made his debut at the Musikverein in Vienna conducting the Vienna Symphony and the Orfeón Donostarria.

As a composer, his “Faust” Symphony for two choirs, two sopranos, tenor, dancers and orchestra, based on texts by Goethe, Leopardi, Mistral, and the Greek “Epitaph of Seikilos”, received great accolades in Guayaquil, Ecuador. His piano version of the Variations op. 31 by Arnold Schoenberg, has been published by Belmont and distributed worldwide by Universal Edition of Vienna, It was recently premiered in Tokyo. He composed numerous pieces for the keyboard, including the “Quaderno per Daniel”, a collection of pieces dedicated to the study of transposition, He is currently working on a set of 24 nocturnes and preludes, and on a collection of virtuoso etudes for piano. His production includes chamber music and solo pieces for several instruments.  He is presently writing his Second symphony, his first violin concerto, a piano concerto, and finalizing his “Paradiso Variations” for piano.

Mo. Anzolini has collaborated with artists of the stature of Leon Fleisher, Francisco Araiza, Richard Croft, Robert Levin, Michael Kofler, Frank Morelli, Dennis Parker, David Shifrin, Miriam Makeba, Erick Friedman, Noa Wildschut, among many others. He has worked with and conducted music by composers Philip Glass, John Harbison, Terry Riley, Osvaldo Golijov, Robert Beaser, Lisa Bielawa, Jacob Druckman, Oliver Knussen, Ezra Laderman, Tania León, Yehudy Wyner, Wim Mertens, Nicola Scardicchio, to name only a few. He has also worked with stage directors Robert Wilson, Werner Herzog, Gian-Carlo Del Monaco, Phelim McDermott, and Tazewell Thompson, among others.

As an educator, Mo. Anzolini taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he took the Symphony Orchestra to the first European Tours in its history, giving exemplary performances of Schoenberg, Mahler and Stravinsky. He was the Head of the Orchestra Department for the New England Conservatory, and gave master-classes in several countries. He was invited to lead the Youth Orchestra of the Americas in two tours to Latin America. He has been juror at the Besançon Conducting Competition in 2015, and has been named adjudicator for the Around the Globe Piano Composition Competition in 2024. He has taught piano, conducting, and composition to numerous private students.

Dante Santiago Anzolini studied orchestral conducting firstly with Mariano Drago Sijanec, then under Mo. Eleazar de Carvalho at Yale University, from which he graduated with top honors. He received the only award given to a young conductor at the Tanglewood Summer Festival in 1992.

Before beginning to study conducting, Mo. Anzolini worked as pianist, chorus leader, and harpsichordist. He studied violin, viola, oboe, percussion, and read mathematics at the University, also cultivating his passion for literature, poetry, world history, medicine and languages. He is the son of Lorenzo Dante Anzolini and Lucila Wawzyniak, of Italian (Friuli-Venezia Giulia) and Chilean (Punta Arenas) lineage respectively.