One of the most talented conductors of his generation, Pietro Rizzo is currently Chief Conductor at the Goteborgs Operan. His immediate engagements include his debuts at the Metropolitan Opera (March 2009), Dallas Opera (February 2009), the Teatro Comunale in Florence (October 2008) and the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm (December 2008).

Previous to his post in Goteborg, he was Erste Kapellmeister at the Aalto Theater in Essen, from 2003 to 2007, where he conducted more than seventy performances of opera and ballet each season. Because of his extensive experience, he has already accumulated a repertoire of more than forty opera titles.Pietro Rizzo was born in Rome, Italy, in 1973. He began his musical studies with the violin, and graduated from the Conservatorio Nazionale S. Cecilia in Rome in 1992. Parallel to his music studies, he completed his formal education, specialising in languages (English, French and German). From 1990 to 1993 he attended the summer courses at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana, where he studied with Boris Belkin and Emanuel Borok, and was awarded the Diploma of Merit in 1992 and 1993 as an outstanding student. Following this, he was offered a full scholarship to continue his studies with Emanuel Borok at Southern Methodist University, and graduated with a Master’s Degree in Violin Performance (1996) and an Artist Certificate (1997). Having always been attracted to conducting, his interest grew while he was in Dallas, and he applied for the famous conducting class at the Sibelius Academy (Helsinki, Finland), and was the only of two students admitted out of more than sixty candidates from all over the world. He studied with Jorma Panula and Leif Segerstam from 1997 to 2000, graduating with a Master’s of Music in Orchestra Conducting.

While studying in Finland, he played as a tutti first violin in the Finnish National Opera, and in September 2000 was asked to jump in to substitute an ailing conductor for a performance of La Boheme with less than twelve hours notice. The performance was a success and he was immediately offered several productions. Since then, he is a regular guest conductor, and appears at least once every season to conduct productions of Italian repertoire.. In the same period (2000-2003), he guest conducted most of the opera companies and symphony orchestras in Finland. Since then, he has been guest conductor at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Volksoper Wien, Rimsky-Korsakov State Opera House (St. Petersburg, Russia), Braunschweig Staatstheater, Bern Stadttheater, New Israeli Opera, Tampere Opera (Finland) and has conducted the Orchestra Sinfonica Giuseppe Verdi di Milano, Essener Philharmoniker, Bergische Symphoniker, Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna, WDR Rundfunkorchester Köln, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Aalborg Symåhony Orchestra (Denmark). Her has recorded for the Finnish Radio, for the Swedish Television and has just recorded a CD for Telos, to be shortly released.

He enjoys inspiring and working with young musicians: since 2002 he is guest professor at the Flanders Opera Studio in Gent, Belgium, where he holds masterclass on Italian operatic repertoire; since 2003 he regularly works with the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Galicia, Spain, where he holds seminars and conducts concerts. Since he has begun his appointment at the Gothenburg Opera in Sweden, he also established a close collaboration with the Swedish National Orchestra Academy where he conducts symphony concerts, and holds seminar classes on repertoire.