Daniela Candillari is the principal conductor at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis since 2022. Celebrated for her dynamic artistry and insightful leadership, she is equally at home premiering bold new works and interpreting classical repertoire. Her international career spans major operatic and symphonic stages, where she is praised for performances that combine “confidence and apparently inexhaustible verve” (The New York Times) with “incisive leadership” (The Wall Street Journal).
Candillari’s 2025/2026 season includes guest engagements with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Canadian Opera Company, London Philharmonic, Liverpool Philharmonic, Cabrillo Festival and Sinfonieorchester Wuppertal. She will also return to the Juilliard School, Louisiana Philharmonic, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis and her alma mater, Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music.
Candillari’s 2024/2025 season included world premieres with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (Nina Shekhar’s Accordion Concerto) and Opera Theatre of Saint Louis (This House by Ricky Ian Gordon, Lynn Nottage and Ruby Aiyo Gerber) and debuts with Kansas City Symphony, Tucson Symphony Orchestra and Louisiana Philharmonic, along with a return to New Orleans Opera.
Her 2023/24 season opened with rave reviews for her “seamless” leadership (The New York Times) of two world premieres: 10 Days in a Madhouse by composer Rene Orth and librettist Hannah Moscovitch at Opera Philadelphia, winner of the Best New Opera Award by the Music Critics Association of North America, and Jeanine Tesori and George Brant’s Grounded with Washington National Opera at the Kennedy Center, a company debut. In previous seasons, she has conducted with the New York Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Minnesota Opera, Detroit Opera and Orchestre Métropolitan Montreal.
Candillari grew up in Serbia and Slovenia. She holds a doctorate in musicology from the Universität für Musik in Vienna, a master of music in jazz studies from Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, and a master of music and bachelor’s degree in piano performance from the Universität für Musik in Graz, Austria.
July 2025
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