JOHN FIORE is the music director of The Norwegian Opera & Ballet (Den Norske Opera & Ballett), the first music director in over a decade of this leading Norwegian arts institution. Having started his tenure in 2009, he is the artistic chief of the company’s musical forces: its orchestra, chorus and ensemble of singers; and conducts on average over 30 performances per season of opera, ballet, symphonic concerts, as well as taking part in chamber music performances.
During the 2012-13 season, Mr. Fiore makes debuts at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples conducting Rusalka and with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande conducting a special New Year’s Concert featuring tenor Joseph Calleja. He returns to the Düsseldorf Symphoniker and to Dresden Semperoper. With the Den Norske Opera & Ballett (DNOB), Mr. Fiore will lead productions of Madama Butterfly, Salome, and Cavalleria Rusticana/Pagliacci, as well as concert performances and a ballet program that includes Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. In summer 2012, Mr. Fiore and the DNOB brought Peter Grimes to the Savonlinna Opera Festival’s 100th anniversary season, where it was triumphantly received and showcased the formidable artistic quality of the DNOB orchestra and chorus under the leadership of maestro Fiore. Highlights of this past season included a debut at the Deutsche Oper Berlin conducting Turandot, Andrea Chénier at the Geneva Opera, and Parsifal at the Prague National Theater, which Mr. Fiore opened as a new production in the prior season.
Mr. Fiore is the former Chief Conductor of the Deutsche Oper-am-Rhein (1998-2009), where he kept an intensive and extensive schedule conducting in the company’s two houses in the neighboring Rhineland cities of Düsseldorf and Duisburg. Throughout his decade-long tenure there, he led more than sixty different operas in broad and diverse repertoire covering German, Italian, Russian, French, Czech languages. His final season included new productions of Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten, Dvorak’s Rusalka, and Janacek’s From the House of the Dead, and a season-long “parade” of the many memorable productions he had premiered during the preceding decade. It included revivals of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, Verdi’s Don Carlos, a complete Wagner Ring cycle, and culminated in a week-long Janacek cycle of five different operas, all conducted by Mr. Fiore within the same week.
Coinciding with his appointment at the Deutsche Oper-am-Rhein, Mr. Fiore was also the Generalmusikdirektor of the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker, the orchestra which plays for the Deutsche Oper-am-Rhein in the Düsseldorf house, and led full seasons of concert symphonic repertoire. Together, he and the orchestra toured in Asia twice (China and Japan) and almost each year performed in guest engagements throughout Europe at festivals and capital city concert halls.
Particularly well known among the international opera houses, Mr. Fiore was a frequent guest of the Metropolitan Opera for more than a decade, leading over one hundred performances of nearly a dozen operas, among them the MET’s premiere production of Dvorak's Rusalka, (1993, and revival in 1997) as well as Aida, La Traviata, Madama Butterfly, La Bohème, Un ballo in maschera, Carmen, and most recently, Tosca.
In Germany, he appears often at Munich’s Bavarian State Opera (Un ballo in maschera, Aida, Nabucco, Der Fliegende Holländer, Tosca, Carmen) and the Dresden Semperoper (Die Walküre, Arabella, Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Nabucco, Aida, La Traviata, La Cenerentola). Prior to his Deutsche Oper-am-Rhein appointment, Mr. Fiore also conducted often at the Cologne Opera, the company where he made his German debut in 1990 with Manon Lescaut. He has returned there many times for a diverse repertoire of Strauss, Wagner, Verdi, Puccini and Janácek, and also conducted the city’s historic and renowned Gürzenich Orchester in many symphonic programs.
In Italy, he has appeared at leading opera houses (La Bohème and La Gioconda at Genoa; La Traviata in Rome), and in the United States, has long enjoyed relationships with both the Chicago Lyric and San Francisco Operas, and also has been to the Houston Grand Opera to lead Tannhäuser.
In recent seasons Mr. Fiore has also been exploring seminal twentieth century works – he has conducted a complete cycle of the major Janacek operas, as well as Berg’s Lulu and Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande. In summer 2003 he led the world premiere of Bright Sheng’s Madame Mao (Santa Fe Opera, another company with which he has had a long history), and in January 2005 conducted the highly successful world premiere of Christian Jost’s Vipern for the DOR.
Born in New York City into a musical family, Mr. Fiore received his earliest musical training from his father, a pianist and choral director, and his mother, a singer. His family moved to Seattle, where he studied piano, cello and other string instruments. Mr. Fiore began his professional musical activities at age 14 as a pianist and coach for the Seattle Opera's annual production of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelunge, a job which he continued for six summers. He later attended the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY. In 1981, he joined the staff of the Santa Fe Opera, where he developed an affinity for the operas of Richard Strauss.
Within a short period of time, he became a prized assistant in three of North America's most respected companies: the San Francisco, Chicago Lyric and Metropolitan Operas. In the summer of 1986 he went to Europe, assisting Zubin Mehta for Die Meistersinger in Florence, and then to the Bayreuth Festival, where he worked with Daniel Barenboim on Tristan und Isolde, returning the next year for Parsifal and Tristan and again in 1988 for the Harry Kupfer Ring production. During this period he also freelanced as an assistant to the great Leonard Bernstein. Also in 1986, he was ready to begin his own conducting career, making his debut at the San Francisco Opera conducting Gounod's Faust.
In 1990 he embarked on an international symphonic career, making debuts on three continents. Since then Mr. Fiore has continued to build his repertoire and orchestral relationships each season. In the summer of 1996, stepping in for Robert Shaw, Mr. Fiore made a critically acclaimed debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl conducting Verdi’s Requiem. In North America, he has since conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, New York Chamber Symphony, Seattle Symphony, and Toronto Symphony, to name but a few. In Europe, orchestral engagements have included the Dresden Staatskapelle, orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Bamberger Sinfoniker, Munich Radio Orchestra, Gürzenich Orchester, Orchester Rheinland-Pfalz, Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Firenze, Orchestra del Teatro La Fenice, Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Slovenian Philharmonic, Orchestre National de Lyon and Orchestre Philharmonique de Montpellier, Basel Radio Symphony Orchestra and Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana, among others.
Last updated September 2012. Contact Opus 3 Artists for the most up-to-date version.
