Enrico Dovico

Since the 2005/2006 season, Enrico Dovico has been first guest conductor of the Cologne Opera, a post he will retain until the year 2009. During his first season there, he presented his production of Verdi’s La forza del destino, and a double bill coupling Francis Poulenc’s Les mamelles de Tirésias with Bohuslav Martinů’s Ariadna; plus renewed premieres of Salome, and Carmen. He has undertaken to prepare two new productions in each of his ensuing seasons with the company. At the beginning of this year, Enrico Dovico accepted an invitation from the International Olympic Committee, to conduct the opening concert of the Winter Olympics in Turin, on February 11, 2006. The roster of classical musicians featured in that event included the RAI Orchestra, the tenor Andrea Bocelli, the baritone Ildebrando D’Arcangelo, and the soprano Annamaria Dell’Oste. The concert was part of a project entitled Italyart, the Winter Olympics’ cultural concomitant which aimed at bringing together sport and culture.

Enrico Dovico made his first CD recording in the spring of 2006, for the renowned Munich label, Orfeo. It contained Bellini operatic arias sung by Alexandra von der Weth, with the Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra. Since then, he has prepared several further projects for the same label. During the summer and autumn months of 2006, Enrico Dovico has worked on new productions of the operas, Nabucco (at Basel), La traviata (Prague), and Don Giovanni (Klagenfurt), and of the operetta, The Merry Widow (Cologne). This will be followed in the spring of 2007 by productions, at Cologne, of Britten’s Billy Budd, and Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier. In the autumn of the same year he will make his debut in Japan, conducting Verdi’s opera, La traviata.

Enrico Dovico made repeated guest appearances at the Cologne Opera still before his current engagement. He debuted there in 1999, with new productions of Rossini’s La Cenerentola, and Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore. In 2000 he was back to conduct Korngold’s Die tote Stadt, and came to visit again in 2005, for the renewed premiere of Verdi’s Don Carlos. Also at Cologne, he conducted Puccini’s Turandot. Between 2001 and 2005 he was first Kappellmeister and deputy general music director at the National Theatre in Mannheim, where he conducted the operas, Fidelio, Nabucco, La traviata, La Bohème, Turandot, Simone Boccanegra, Norma, Othello, Tosca, Il trovatore, Boris Godunov, Der Fliegende Holländer, Carmen, Tannhäuser, and others. Enrico Dovico has been a frequent guest of the Prague State Opera, where he has to his credit new productions of Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia (2005), Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore and Puccini’s Turandot (both 1995), and La Gioconda (1997), and appearances as conductor in additional performances of Tosca, La traviata, Il trovatore, and other operas.

Enrico Dovico studied piano and conducting in his native city of Turin. Between 1981 and 1995, he was accredited voice coach (working with Lucia Valentini-Terrani among others) and music assistant at the city’s Teatro Regio. As an assistant, he worked with many prominent conductors, including Carlo Maria Giulini, Giuseppe Sinopoli, García Navarro, Alberto Zedda, Zoltán Peskó, Daniel Oren, and Bruno Campanella. In 1991, Dovico made his debut as an opera conductor at the Stuttgart State Opera, with a production of Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera. In subsequent years, he guest appeared, among other opera houses, at the State Theatre in Darmstadt, the Janáček Opera in Brno (with Verdi’s Aida, and Messa da Requiem), the New Israeli Opera in Tel Aviv, at Bremen, Essen, and Mannheim. From 1997–2001, he was first Kappellmeister and deputy general music director at the State Theatre in Wiesbaden.