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Joseph Rescigno
Joseph Rescigno (Conductor)
Joseph Rescigno has conducted some 50 companies around the world from the New York City Opera and the Montreal Symphony to companies in both of the Americas, Asia and Europe. In concerts, he has led a diverse repertory of symphonies, concertos, and oratorios from Bach through Shostakovich and Corigliano. With opera companies he has conducted virtually all of the core Italian and French opera repertory from the romantic works through the verismo and bel canto schools. He has also led Mozart, Wagner and Richard Strauss operas and contemporary works including Mark Adamo's Little Women and Minoru Miki's Joruri (world premiere and recording for Toei Video Disk). And he is the conductor of the highly regarded recording Verismo featuring Diana Soviero, with the orchestra of the Montreal Opera, in a collection of arias from well-known and little-known operas of the verismo school (Analekta label, Canada).
As Artistic Advisor and Principal Conductor of the Florentine Opera (Milwaukee, WI), where he is in his 25th season, Rescigno has conducted some of the more challenging repertory the company has mounted, including Elektra, Der Rosenkavalier, Tristan und Isolde, and Die Walküre, and has conducted subscription concerts for the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. In 2008, he will conduct the world premiere of a new opera by William Bolcom for the Florentine. Rescigno has meanwhile maintained a busy guest conducting schedule on the podiums of such companies as the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Washington National Opera, Hungarian State Opera in Budapest, Opera Theater of St. Louis, Seattle Opera, Glimmerglass Opera, Vancouver Opera, Opéra de Marseille, and L'Opéra de Montreal.
While Artistic Director of l'Orchestre Métropolitain of Montreal, Rescigno made four other recordings, also for Analekta: Beethoven's Eroica Symphony plus the overture and rarely performed arias from the incidental music to the play Egmont with soprano Karina Gauvin; Brahms's two piano concertos with Anton Kuerti; Mendelssohn's two violin concertos with Angèle Dubeau as soloist; and all soprano arias from Mozart's Marriage of Figaro plus Exsultate Jubilate with soprano Lyne Fortin. He and that orchestra, along with soloist Anton Kuerti, also earned Quebec's Prix Opus for Concert of the Year in 1997 for a program of all five Beethoven piano concertos.
This native New Yorker, who makes his home in Manhattan, comes from a long line of musicians on both sides of his family. His uncle is the prominent conductor Nicola Rescigno, a founder of both the Dallas and Chicago Opera companies. Rescigno himself trained as a pianist and has been studying and performing music since childhood. He earned his Master of Music in piano from the Manhattan School of Music, after completing his undergraduate work in modern languages and philosophy at Fordham University (Phi Beta Kappa). As an undergraduate, he also studied in Rome for a year at Università Gregoriana and privately at L'Accademia di Santa Cecilia. His formal education completed, Rescigno went on to serve the time-honored, European-type opera-house apprenticeship with such influential conductors as Laszlo Halasz (founder of the New York City Opera), Bruno Maderna, Gianandrea Gavazzeni, Carlo Moresco, and his uncle. Other powerful influences included pianist Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli in Rescigno's student days in Rome, Herbert von Karajan, Erich Leinsdorf and Roberto Benaglio, the legendary chorus master of La Scala. Each one personally taught him something unforgettable. And, throughout his career, Rescigno has also been privileged to collaborate with prominent instrumentalists like Elmar Oliveira, Ida Haendel, Brigitte Engerer and Pieter Wispelwey and singers including June Anderson, Placido Domingo, Tatiana Troyanos and Deborah Voigt (her first Ariadne).