Daniela Candillari

Conductor Daniela Candillari continues to be recognized for her dynamic and compelling performances at opera houses and concert stages throughout North America and Europe. Her 2019-20 season features a number of important debuts, including her New York Philharmonic debut conducting Thomson’s The Mother of us All at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. She makes her mainstage debut at Arizona Opera in November conducting Gregory Spears’ Fellow Travelers, which she led in previous seasons with both the Lyric Opera of Chicago and Minnesota Opera. Following her acclaimed performances of Acquanetta with the PROTOTYPE Festival, Candillari returns to New York in January to conduct Rev. 23, produced by Trinity Wall Street and directed by James Darrah. An avid educator, she spent the summer of 2019 conducting the West Coast premiere of Jennifer Higdon’s Cold Mountain at the Music Academy of the West. She makes her debut at the Mannes School of Music this season for performances of The Turn of the Screw, and returns to the Manhattan School of Music for a new production of Martha. Candillari makes her debut with Cincinnati Opera in the summer of 2020 for the company’s 100th Anniversary season, leading Dvořák’s Rusalka. Recent engagements include her debut with Los Angeles Opera for Ellen Reid’s Pulitzer Prize winning opera, prism, Opera Philadelphia in a new production of Rene Orth’s Empty the House, her Boston conducting debut in the world premiere of PermaDeath, and her Asian debut in Hong Kong conducting Du Yun’s Pulitzer Prize winning opera, Angel’s Bone. She appeared in concert with Trinity Wall Street’s NOVUS NY Festival to open their 2018 season in celebration of Leonard Bernstein’s Centennial, and returned to the Lyric Opera of Chicago in 2019 for Jack Perla’s An American Dream. In past seasons Candillari has collaborated with Matthew Aucoin on his opera Crossing for The Brooklyn Academy of Music’s NEXT WAVE Festival and Vasily Petrenko on a production of Falstaff with Royal Liverpool Philharmonic featuring Sir Bryn Terfel. In addition to leading workshops for Arizona Opera (The Copper Queen) and Opera Philadelphia (Double Exposure), she workshopped Rachel Peters’ and Royce Vavrek’s opera Wild Beast of the Bungalow, and gave the first public presentation of Hannah Lash’s opera Beowulf for the New Works Showcase, presented by OPERA America. Candillari conducted the world premiere of Stefania de Kenessey’s Bonfire of the Vanities at the Museo del Barrio in New York. As a composer, Candillari has been commissioned by artists including instrumentalists from the Boston, Cleveland, Detroit, and Pittsburgh Symphonies, as well as the three resident orchestras of Lincoln Center - the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, and the New York City Ballet. A champion of contemporary repertoire, Candillari founded her own chamber orchestra Gravity Shift in New York City in order to bring traditional repertoire to new audiences. A native of Slovenia, Candillari holds a Doctorate in Musicology from the Universität für Musik in Vienna, a Master of Music in Jazz Studies from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, and a Master of Music and Bachelor in Piano Performance from the Universität für Musik in Graz. She was a Fulbright Scholarship recipient and was subsequently awarded a TED Fellowship.