Conductor Daniela Candillari brings her “confidence and apparently inexhaustible verve” (The New York Times) to opera houses and concert stages throughout North America and internationally. She is renowned for guiding groundbreaking world premieres to the stage “with a sure hand” (The New York Times), as well as her “incisive leadership” (The Wall Street Journal) of classical music’s most frequently performed masterpieces.
Candillari’s exciting 2024/2025 season of orchestra and opera engagements includes two world premieres in St. Louis, where she enters her fourth season as principal conductor at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. In celebration of its 50th anniversary season, she conducts the company’s 44th world premiere, This House, with music by Ricky Ian Gordon and libretto by Pulitzer Prize-winner Lynn Nottage and her daughter, Ruby Aiyo Gerber. Earlier in the year, she leads the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in the world premiere of Nina Shekhar’s Accordion Concerto, an SLSO commission, featuring accordionist Hanzhi Wang, on a program with Samuel Barber’s School for Scandal overture and Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 (From the New World). Candillari’s season opens in Belgium with Puccini’s Madama Butterfly at Opera Ballet Vlaanderen.
She returns to New York to lead Trinity Church’s resident orchestra NOVUS in the East Coast premiere of Gabriel Kahane’s emergency shelter intake form, followed by appearances leading concerts at the Juilliard School and the Manhattan School of Music. Other 2024/25 highlights include a return to New Orleans Opera to conduct Camille Saint-Saëns’ rarely performed French masterpiece, Samson and Delilah, and debuts with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, Kansas City Symphony and Tucson Symphony Orchestra. Candillari’s 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, where she made her company debut, and Jeanine Tesori and George Brant’s Grounded with Washington National Opera at the Kennedy Center, also a company debut.
Winner of the Best New Opera Award by the Music Critics Association of North America, 10 Days in a Madhouse, about trailblazing reporter Nellie Bly, also was named the best classical music performance of 2023 by the Washington Post, which noted, “under the baton of Daniela Candillari, the ensemble swerved from lush, harmonically rich embraces of memory into disconcerting panic attacks of sound effects.”
Immediately following this triumph, Candillari conducted the world premiere of Grounded, a co-commission of the Metropolitan Opera, with the Wall Street Journal praising her “expertly rendered” delivery of “Tesori’s colorful orchestration.” Possessing a “fine combination of fire and attention to detail” (KDHX), Candillari continued her season in February with an appearance at Yale School of Music for Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, followed by an April return to Arizona Opera for Mozart’s Don Giovanni.
In June, she received great acclaim for leading Opera Theatre of Saint Louis’ company premiere of Handel’s Julius Caesar, as well as the annual Center Stage concert, before concluding the season in July with Bizet’s Carmen at Music Academy of the West, where she has served as principal opera conductor since 2022, following her 2019 debut with the company in Jennifer Higdon’s Cold Mountain. In the previous season, Candillari made her New York Philharmonic debut in the orchestra’s inaugural season in the new David Geffen Hall, conducting cellist Yo-Yo Ma in Elgar’s Cello Concerto, for which she was praised for her “enthusiastic, energetic yet sensitive direction” and “perfect control over the orchestra” (Broadway World).
She made her Carnegie Hall Presents debut leading the American Composers Orchestra in a program of premieres. Other engagements from previous seasons include debuts with the Metropolitan Opera and Deutsche Oper Berlin, and productions with Lyric Opera of Chicago, Minnesota Opera, Detroit Opera, Orchestre Métropolitan Montreal and Classical Tahoe Festival.
A passionate educator, she has led opera productions at the Juilliard School and concerts at Manhattan School of Music. She has also led the made-for-film world premiere of Clint Borzoni’s The Copper Queen with Arizona Opera, released in 2021 and later screened by Opera Philadelphia in 2022, as well as the film of Ana Sokolović’s Svadba with Boston Lyric Opera and Opera Philadelphia, released in early 2022 and winner of Opera America’s 2023 Award for Digital Excellence in Opera.
As a composer, Candillari has been commissioned by established artists, including instrumentalists from the Boston, Cleveland, Detroit and Pittsburgh aymphonies, as well as the three resident orchestras of Lincoln Center: the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic and the New York City Ballet. She is deeply involved with Music Academy of the West’s programming for young artists and has recently participated in masterclasses and discussions at DePaul University, Chicago Humanities Festival and Valissima Institute.
Daniela 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. A Fulbright Scholarship recipient, she was also awarded a TED Fellowship; she is fluent in German, English, Italian, Serbian and Slovenian.
2025
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