Sergio Pellegrini

Sergio Pellegrini is a conductor and clarinettist. As a clarinettist, he has collaborated with the Filarmonica della Scala, the Orchestra del Teatro San Carlo in Naples, the Orchestra Toscanini in Parma, the Orchestra da Camera Italiana under Salvatore Accardo, the Orchestra da Camera di Mantova and the Orchestra del Teatro Regio di Parma. In twentieth-century repertoire he spent two years as principal clarinet with the European Music Project in Ulm, Germany. In 1993 he won the Amilcare Ponchielli national competition for wind ensembles in Cremona.

In 1997 he founded the Parma Opera Ensemble with a group of distinguished instrumentalists. It subsequently performed under the names I Solisti del Teatro Regio di Parma and Solisti dell’Opera di Parma. The ensemble has appeared at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, the Teatro Regio in Parma, the Teatro Grande in Brescia, the Teatro Municipale in Piacenza, the Unione Musicale in Turin, the Sagra Musicale Umbra, the Festival Internacional de Música in Cambrils, London’s Chelsea Festival, Kioi Hall in Tokyo, Tōfuku-ji Temple in Kyoto for the Otobutai festival, Ginko Hall in Fukuoka, the Festival of Sant Feliu de Guíxols, the United Nations headquarters and Carnegie Hall in New York, and the Festival of Reus. Invitations have also taken him to Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Hall, St Petersburg, Kaliningrad, Liepāja and Riga.

From 1999 Pellegrini was president and artistic director of the Orchestra del Teatro Regio di Parma, which he founded. Until 2012 it participated in the theatre’s opera, symphonic and chamber music seasons and the Festival Verdi, with an activity of approximately 180 working days each year. It appeared in international festivals and opera and concert seasons in Italy, France, Spain, the United States, Germany, Mexico, India, Japan, Korea and China. Bruno Bartoletti was a central conductor in its development; the orchestra also worked with Riccardo Muti, Lorin Maazel, Yuri Temirkanov, Myung-Whun Chung, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos and Michel Plasson.

As a guest conductor Pellegrini has worked in operatic and symphonic repertoire with the East European Philharmonic Orchestra, the Russian Philharmonic Orchestra, the philharmonic orchestras of Arad and Bacău in Romania, the Orchestra del Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza and the Philharmonic Orchestra of Porto. With the Orchestra del Teatro Regio di Parma he has collaborated with soloists including Nikolai Lugansky, Corrado Giuffredi, Andrea Oliva and Andrea Bacchetti, and singers including Leo Nucci, Vladimir Stoyanov, Fiorenza Cedolins, Desirée Rancatore, Roberto Aronica, Roberto Scandiuzzi and Luca Salsi. In March 2012 he conducted Barbara Frittoli at the Lisinski Concert Hall in Zagreb.

He has contributed to recordings for Sony, Unitel and Stradivarius, both as a clarinettist and as artistic director of the Orchestra del Teatro Regio di Parma.