Oleg Caetani (born 1956,
Lausanne
,
Switzerland) is a conductor of Russian and Italian descent.
He is the son of
Igor Markevitch and
Donna Topazia Caetani, Markevitch's second wife, who is descended
from a Roman family that included the early 14th-century
Pope Boniface VIII. Caetani has chosen to
use his mother's family name to continue its lineage.. His
half-brother is Vaslav Markevitch.
Caetani studied with
Nadia Boulanger
for several years. At the Conservatory of Santa Cecilia in Rome, he
studied conducting with
Franco
Ferrara and composition with Irma Ravinale. He made his debut
at age 17 with a production of
Claudio Monteverdi's
Il combattimento di
Tancredi e Clorinda in Rome. He then went to the Moscow
Conservatory to study conducting with
Kirill Kondrashin and musicology with
Nadezhda Nikolaeva. He graduated from the St Petersburg
Conservatory in conducting with
Ilya
Musin.
Caetani won the RAI Turin and
Karajan Competitions in Berlin, and
started his professional career as assistant to
Otmar Suitner at the German State Opera,
Berlin. He has since been Chief Conductor at the German National
Theatre in Weimar, First Conductor at the Frankfurt Opera House,
Music Director first at the Wiesbaden Opera House, later at the
Chemnitz Opera House and of the Robert Schumann Philharmonic
Orchestra.
In 2001,
Caetani conducted his first production at La Scala
, Milan with
Turandot. His first
conducting appearance with
English National Opera (ENO) was in
2003 with
Khovanshchina. In
February 2005, ENO announced the appointment of Caetani as its
music director to succeed
Paul Daniel,
effective in 2006. However, after the November 2005 resignation of
ENO's then-artistic director, Sean Doran, who had appointed
Caetani, Caetani's own appointment as the next ENO Music Director
was cancelled in December 2005, the month before he was scheduled
to take up the post. Concerns had arisen that Caetani's commitments
in
Australia limited his available time to
serve with ENO. Even though Caetani never formally took up the post
of ENO's music director, he fulfilled his contract to conduct ENO's
2006 production of
Sir John in
Love (the first fully staged revival since 1958).
Caetani made his Australian conducting debut in 2001 with the
Melbourne Symphony
Orchestra (MSO). In January 2005, he became the MSO's Chief
Conductor and Artistic Director. In 2007 he led the MSO on its
second European tour, which took in performances in major centres
including Berlin, Madrid, Milan and Paris. In March 2008, the MSO
announced the extension of Caetani's contract through the end of
2010. He led the MSO in the Australian premiere of
Shostakovich's
Symphony No. 13 ("Babi Yar") on 7 August
2008. His recording projects with the MSO include symphonies of
Alexandre Tansman and the
orchestral works of
Rudi Stephan. On 14
October 2009, a year ahead of schedule, the MSO announced it had
terminated Caetani's contract due to artistic differences.
Caetani's other recordings include the first complete cycle of the
Shostakovich symphonies by an Italian orchestra, with the
Orchestra Sinfonica
di Milano Giuseppe Verdi.
Caetani has been married twice. He has two daughters from his first
marriage, and another daughter with his second wife Susanna.
References
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