Roberto Paternostro

Roberto Paternostro was born in Vienna, where he studied with Hans Swarovski at the Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst. He pursued his training with György Ligeti and with Christoph von Dohnányi in Hamburg. From 1978 – 1984, he was engaged as an assistant to Herbert von Karajan, in Berlin. Roberto Paternostro made his international conducting debut in a gala concert at the Arena of Verona, in 1985.

Between 1991 and 2000, Maestro Paternostro was music director of the Württembergische Philharmonie, and from 1997 – 2007 he served in the same post at the Staatstheater Kassel, as well as being the artistic director of the Gustav-Mahler Festtage Kassel. While at Kassel, he conducted new productions of operas by Richard Wagner (Der Ring des Nibelungen; Parsifal; Tristan und Isolde; Tannhäuser; Lohengrin, and others), Verdi (Otello; Macbeth; Simon Boccanegra; La traviata; Il trovatore; Rigoletto; Un ballo in maschera; Don Carlo), Puccini (Madama Butterfly), Richard Strauss (Elektra; Der Rosenkavalier; Ariadne auf Naxos, and others), Peter Eötvös (Drei Schwestern), Prokofiev (Love for Three Oranges), Mussorgsky (Boris Godunov in Shostakovich’s version), and others. He has guest appeared at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich (Macbeth; Smetana’s The Bartered Bride; Eugene Onegin), the Berlin State Opera (Falstaff), Dresden’s Semperoper (La bohème), Teatro La Fenice in Venice, Teatro Liceu in Barcelona, Volksoper in Vienna, Teatro San Carlo in Naples, as well as in opera houses of Madrid, Genoa, Parma, Oslo, Seville, Budapest, Tel Aviv, and elsewhere. Similarly extensive have been his collaboration with major symphony orchestras, and his discography (among other titles, the Wagner Ring, Verdi’s La traviata and Simon Boccanegra, or Bruckner and Mahler symphonies). He worked with Montserrat Caballé on a twelve-part television recording for Arte/ZDF.

Since 2009 he has held the post of artistic director of the Israel Chamber Orchestra which he will conduct in the 2010/2011 season at the Bruckner Festival in Linz, the Haydn Festival in Eisenstadt, and at a number of further venues, including Tel Aviv, Stuttgart, Cologne, Tokyo, and others. During the same season, he will also return for a fresh series of guest appearances at the Vienna Volksoper (Carmen; Die Zauberflöte; Die Fledermaus).

• For detailed information, see www.paternostro.at