Giancarlo Rizzi was born in Verona in 1982. An orchestral conductor with an international profile, he made his debut in September 2025 on the podium of the Théâtre des Champs Elysées with an extraordinary production of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, leading the orchestra Les Siécles in the very hall where the historic premiere that revolutionized the history of music had taken place.

He has collaborated with institutions such as the Opéra de Paris for Don Giovanni and the Theater an der Wien in Vienna for Gounod’s Faust, as well as the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro with Rossini’s Il Viaggio a Reims.

He has also worked with the Finnish National Opera, the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam, the Rossini in Wildbad Festival, the Théâtre de La Monnaie in Brussels, and numerous symphony orchestras in Italy and abroad, including the Dutch Het Gelders Orkest, the Finnish Sinfonia Lahti, and the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano. Other orchestras he has conducted include the Orchestra di Padova e del Veneto, I Pomeriggi Musicali, the Sanremo Symphony Orchestra, the Tampere Filharmonia, and the Kielce Symphony Orchestra in Poland.

Giancarlo Rizzi has devoted special attention to Verdi, publishing with Manzoni Editore Oberto, Birth of an Opera, an essay that reconstructs for the first time the origins of Verdi’s first opera, Oberto, Conte di San Bonifacio. This work leads to a substantial revision of the musicological narrative developed thus far regarding the composer’s early years.

After studying piano and composition at the Conservatory of Verona, he pursued his orchestral conducting studies in Finland at the prestigious Sibelius Academy. He later completed his training through advanced courses with Lorin Maazel in the United States and at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena, where he was awarded a scholarship as the best student in 2015.