Fabio Luisi is one of the world’s greatest conductors who has performed many great symphonic works and operatic repertoire. His work has been recognized through many awards including Italy’s Cavaliere della Repubblica Italiana and Commendatore della Stella d’Italia, and Genoa’s Grifo d’Oro, the highest honor given by the city of Genoa. He has served as music director at the Zurich Opera, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, and NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo.
Now as the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s Music Director, a position he has held since 2020, he is taking on one of his most ambitious projects for the orchestra, The Ring Cycle. Having conducted the tetralogy in Dresden and at the Metropolitan Opera, Luisi has received praise for his reading. In anticipation of the project, the Italian conductor spoke to OperaWire about the upcoming Ring Cycle and the challenges of doing it with an orchestra.
OperaWire: The Dallas Symphony recently released a new recording of Franz Schmidt’s “The Book with Seven Seals” on its streaming platform. Tell me about the experience of performing this very unknown work. What does streaming mean to you currently in this panorama? Fabio Luisi: Starting with the streaming, I think streaming is important for an orchestra because it makes this orchestra accessible to everybody.
So it is a good help. It is not the real thing, of course, because the real thing is the concert, and the real thing is to have an audience have a physical conn.