John Fiore

I love singers, and I think the experience I've had working with singers almost all my life helps me a great deal in my conducting.
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by Bianca L. Nica
November 24, 2023
Read the entire

No.9/2023

of opera charm magazine

INTRODUCTION

OPERA Charm Magazine was thrilled to finally meet M° John Fiore at the Deutsche Oper Berlin in late September, when the American Operatic & Symphonic conductor jumped-in for Puccini’s Il Trittico & continued his stay in the city for four performances of Turandot. Fiore needs no further presentation, being a seasoned conductor well-known among the international opera houses, praised for his musicality and his skillful expression on the podium. In an interview by Bianca L. Nica, Fiore talked about the flexibility, experience & skills that allowed him to walk in the bit last minute for such a complex piece as Il Trittico, while alternating it with Turandot, about how to achieve these attributes as a conductor & many other captivating arguments.

BIOGRAPHY

A seasoned conductor well-known among the international opera houses, John Fiore is praised for his musicality and his skillful expression on the podium. Maestro Fiore has led acclaimed performances in a diverse range of symphonic and operatic repertoire with the some of the finest orchestras and opera companies in the world. He is a frequent guest conductor at many of the foremost opera houses in Europe and the United States, with which he enjoys enduring relationships. Highlights of Mr. Fiore’s 2023-24 season include Il trittico, Turandot and La Gioconda at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Otello at the Semperoper Dresden, Rigoletto and a symphonic concert at the Royal Swedish Opera, Madama Butterfly at the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet and Nabuco at Opéra de Lausanne. After appearing at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in June 2019 to conduct Tosca, his 2019-20 season included Eugene Onegin at the Royal Swedish Opera, the important AIDS Opera Gala event at Deutsche Oper Berlin (which was televised), a new production of Samson et Dalila at the Washington National Opera, as well as Fidelio, Les Contes d’Hoffmann and Die Fledermaus at the Semperoper Dresden. After the pandemic, he appeared with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, L’Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, and conducted a new production of Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta at the Swedish Royal Opera in October 2021. He also recently conducted (and recorded for BR Klassik) the complete music of Beethoven’s Egmont at the Prinzregententheater in Munich with the Münchner Rundfunk Orchester, with the soprano Christina Landshamer and the actor August Zirner. Other highlights of 2022 have been a new production of Puccini’s Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi at the Royal Swedish Opera, and Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, which will be released on DVD, and a major revival of Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots at the Dresden Semperoper. Mo. Fiore has been the Music Director of several leading opera companies including the Norwegian Opera, where he served from 2009 through 2015 as the institution’s first music director in over a decade, and the first in the new opera house. There, he conducted on average over thirty performances of opera, ballet, and symphonic concerts per season, including several world premieres. He was also the former Music Director of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein from 1999 to 2009, where he kept an intensive and extensive schedule conducting in the company’s two houses in the neighboring Rhineland cities of Düsseldorf and Duisburg. Throughout his decade-long tenure there, he led more than sixty different operas in diverse repertoire covering German, Italian, Russian, French, and Czech languages. Highlights of his tenure there were several complete Wagner Ring Cycles, and a festival of five different Janáček operas in five consecutive nights. He also conducted Die Meistersinger and Der Rosenkavalier on six consecutive evenings when he took the DOR on tour to the Savonlinna Festival in 2002. Concurrent with his appointment at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, Mr. Fiore was also General Music Director of the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker, and led full seasons of symphonic concert repertoire, with highlights such as a semi-annual Beethoven Ninth Symphony, and other major works such as the Berlioz La Damnation de Faust and Schönberg’s massive Gurrelieder.

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INTERVIEW

Dear M° Fiore, thank you for having accepted our invitation! I was thrilled to see you on the podium of the Deutsche Oper Berlin last month, conducting Turandot, but also jumping in to replace the Musical Director of the theatre, M° Donald Runnicles, for Puccini’s Il Trittico, only a few days before the premiere. Congratulations once […]

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Alice Lechner

Alice Lechner

Alice Lechner comes from a music-loving family. Her first encounter with the opera universe was at the tender age of six. The grandeur of the stage productions and costumes, the backstage chatter, and last, but definitely not least, the music left her in awe, beginning with Mozart’s Don Giovanni. The overall feeling that opera awakens in anyone who gets a glimpse into this part of artistic eternity, that each and every day passes the test of time, was what drew her to stay and be a part of this world. The Opera House of Brașov became her second home, and the people who worked there were her second family.

Since then, Alice has devoted her spare time to maximising her musical knowledge through instrumental studies, studying both piano and violin for a short time. In the following years, her number one passion stepped out of the limelight and graciously gave way to Law Studies.
Since 2018 she has been studying Law at “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University in Iași.

Her passion for opera, even if it is no longer her top professional priority in terms of career, it has most definitely become her priority during her free time. Wanting to experience the best of both worlds and extend her musical horizons, she regularly attends opera performances throughout Romania and abroad.
With OPERA Charm Magazine, Alice aims to nurture her creative side to help it flourish and bloom and to discover, alongside the magazine’s readers, the fascinatingly complex world of opera.

Currently, she is an LL.M. in Business Law at “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University in Iași.

Oana Zamfir

Oana Zamfir is a second year MA student at the “George Enescu” National University of Arts, at the Department of Musicology.

She studied violin for 12 years at the “Stefan Luchian” High School of Art in Botosani, later focusing on the theoretical aspects of music. In 2019 she completed her bachelor studies in Musicology as a student of the National Academy of Music “Gheorghe Dima” in Cluj-Napoca. Her research during 2018-2019 brought to the forefront elements of the archaic ritual within works of composers who activated during the communist period, giving her the opportunity to start a research internship at the “Carl von Ossietzky” University in Germany. In this context, she recorded conversations with members of the Sophie Drinker Institute in Bremen, and had access to documents directly from the Myriam Marbé archive.

Since 2019 she has been a teacher of Music Education and Theoretical Music Studies, making full use of interactive methods in the musical training of students and working, at the same time, with the children’s choir founded in the first year of her activity.

Her interests include pursuing a degree in interior design in 2020.

Alexandru Suciu

Alexandru Suciu inherited his passion for art growing up in a family of several generations of musicians. He began his musical studies at the “Augustin Bena” School of Music in Cluj, where he studied piano and guitar. Even though his main study direction was philological, his passion for music prevailed. He began his academical journey at the Faculty of Letters of the “Babeș-Bolyai” University, studying Comparative literature and English. He continued by studying Opera Singing at the “Gheorghe Dima” National Music Academy. He also graduated the Musical Education section, followed by Artistic Directing at the Musical Performing Arts department.

His multidisciplinary education opened the doors towards research, which is seen both through his participation in national and international conferences and symposia, such as the Salzburg Easter School PhD-forum, organized by the Salzburg Universität or the Silesian Meeting of Young Scholars, organized by the Institute of English at the University of Silesia, as well as the collaboration with Opera Charm Magazine.

During his student years, he won several prizes, including the Grand Prize at the “Paul Constantinescu” National Musical Interpretation Competition, the Romanian Composers and Musicologists’ Union Prize at the same competition, the First Prize and the Schubert Prize at the “Ada Ulubeanu” Competition.

He further developed his artistic skills by specializing in courses and masterclasses held by personalities such as Vittorio Terranova, Giuseppe Sabbatini, Marian Pop, Ines Salazar, Riccardo Zanellato, Paolo Bosisio, Valentina Farcaș and Manuel Lange in contexts such as the Internationale Sommerakademie für Operngesang Deutschlandsberg, Corso Internazionale di Canto Lirico I.M.C. Licata or the Europäische Akademie für Musik und darstellende Kunst Montepulciano. Besides his activity on-stage, he currently teaches Opera Singing Didactics, and Pedagogical Practice within the Department for Teacher Education and Training at the “Gheorghe Dima” National Music Academy.

Cristina Fieraru

Cristina is a 24 year-old Romanian soprano & a student at the National University of Music Bucharest, where she pursues the MA program in Vocal Performance.

She made her debut in Pamina from “Die Zauberflöte” by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at only 19 years old at the Bucharest National Opera House, as a member of the Ludovic Spiess Experimental Opera Studio. Over the years she made her debut in roles such as Contessa d’Almaviva (Le nozze di Figaro), Mimì & Musetta (La Bohème), Alice Ford (Falstaff), Erste Dame (Die Zauberflöte) in her university’s opera productions.
Her passion and experience extends in the field of choral music, too.

She has been part of our dream team since the fall of 2021. For a good period of time she took care of OPERA Charm’s social media and took you on the monthly journey through the history of opera through our Legends rubric – and a few times through the Theaters around the World rubric.

Her little soul rubric – from 2021 to present – is definitely the Conductors of the Future, where, every month, she gives you the chance to meet a young star of the world of conducting and, of course, to find out what’s the most charming feature of opera in these artists’ views.

BIANCA L. NICA

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