Charles Olivieri-Munroe

Charles Olivieri-Munroe was born in Malta, and spent his childhood and formative years in Canada, studying piano with leading Canadian educator Boris Berlin at the Royal Conservatory of Music and at the University of Toronto. After graduation in 1992, he won three scholarship grants in Ontario, which enabled him to study conducting with Otakar Trhlík at the Janáček Academy of Music in Brno. He was also a pupil of Jiří Bělohlávek, and twice attended the summer classes at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, Italy, where he studied with Ilya Musin and Yuri Temirkanov. He embarked on his career as a conductor in the Czech Republic: between 1993 and 1995, he was conductor in residence at Karlovy Vary, and in the following two years held the same post at the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2000 he won the Prague Spring International Conducting Competition. From 2001–2004, he was principal conductor of the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra in Bratislava, with which he made a number of recordings, including a complete set of Mendelssohn symphonies. This year is witnessing Charles Olivieri-Munroe’s thirteenth season as principal conductor of the Northern Bohemia Philharmonic Orchestra in Teplice.

During his career so far, the young conductor has toured the five continents, working with some of the world’s finest orchestras, including the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin, the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Budapest Symphony Orchestra, the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in Brussels, as well as other major orchestras in Toronto, Quebec, Oregon, New York, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Lisbon, Athens, Istanbul, Mexico City, Tokyo and Seoul. Apart from that, he has worked with opera houses in Berlin (Komische Oper) and Venice (Teatro Fenice), and in the 2007/08 made his debut in Milan (Don Giovanni), where he returned in July 2009, to conduct Rigoletto. During the current season he is making his debut at the Warsaw Chamber Opera (Stravinsky, Rake’s Progress). From 1992–1994, he was permanent conductor of the Brno Chamber Opera, where he coupled productions of early music with, among other projects, the opera Diogenes, by contemporary Czech composer Ilja Hurník. In 2004, he was involved in the making of a production mounted by the Netherlands National Ballet. Since the 2007/08 season, he has been chief conductor of the Crested Butte Festival in Colorado, USA, and artistic director of the Interregionales Jugendsinfonieorchester in Germany.

Charles Olivieri-Munroe has made a rapid progress to a prominent status among Canadian conductors of the young generation, while on the international scene he has earned growing acclaim, most notably for his interpretation of the Slavic repertoire, as well as for his sharp focus on the clarity of orchestral sound. In the context of Czech concert life, his talent and his incontestable charisma have won him lasting recognition.