Speranza Scappucci © Ian Ehm
Starting with the 2025–26 season, Speranza Scappucci will serve as principal guest conductor at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in London. She made history as the first Italian woman to conduct an opera production and the Filarmonica della Scala orchestra in Milan. From 2017 to 2022, she served as music director of the Opéra Royal de Wallonie in Liège. Beginning in 2026, she will assume the artistic direction of the MiTo SettembreMusica festival in Milan and Turin for a two-year term.
She opened the 2025/26 season with her debut in Les Vêpres Siciliennes in London, followed by Otello in Strasbourg and Un ballo in maschera in Paris. Her future engagements include a return to La Scala in 2026 for a new production of Lucia di Lammermoor. A frequent guest at the world’s leading opera houses, she collaborates with the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Opéra National de Paris, the Vienna State Opera, the Berlin State Opera, the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto, and the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
Recently, she has conducted Don Pasquale, I Capuleti e i Montecchi, and Madama Butterfly in Paris; La Bohème and Attila in London; Rigoletto and La rondine at the Met; as well as La traviata in Munich and Berlin, Turandot in Washington, and Lucia di Lammermoor in Zurich and Tokyo. In Liège, she has led landmark productions such as Dialogues des Carmélites, Eugene Onegin, Simon Boccanegra, Aida, and La sonnambula.
In the symphonic realm, she has conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the RAI Orchestra, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, and the Filarmonica della Scala. Between 2022 and 2024, she hosted the series La gioia della musica on RAI 3. Her discography (Warner Classics, Opus Arte, Deutsche Grammophon) features artists such as Marina Rebeka and Saimir Pirgu. Named Commander of the Italian Republic in 2016 and Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters in 2021, she has also received the Porto Venere Donna, Margherita Hack, Vittorio De Sica, and De Sanctis Europe awards.
