Enrique Mazzola

Italian conductor Enrique Mazzola is Music Director at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, where he recently announced his extension to 2031. He is also Principal Guest Conductor at Deutsche Oper Berlin.

In the 2024/25 season, Mazzola conducts the Lyric Opera in productions of Rigoletto and Fidelio, Missy Mazzoli’s The Listeners, and a programme of works by Puccini with star soprano, Sondra Radvanovksy. He returns to the Deutsche Oper Berlin for runs of Macbeth and Werther, New National Theatre Tokyo with Madama Butterfly and makes his debut at the Aspen Festival.

Recent highlights on the operatic stage include debuts with Salzburg Festspiele (Orphée aux Enfers), Wiener Staatsoper (Don Pasquale) and Dutch National Opera with a full cycle of Donizetti’s Queens (Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda, Roberto Devereux). Mazzola also brought the same cycle to Opernhaus Zürich. Notable returns include Metropolitan Opera, Bregenzer Festspiele and Glyndebourne Festival Opera and Deutsche Oper Berlin with a landmark performance of the Meyerbeer cycle.

On the symphonic stage, Mazzola has made debuts with Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, Philharmonia Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Oslo Philharmonic, New Japan Philharmonic, Taipei Symphony, Utah Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Luxembourg Philharmonic, Brussels Philharmonic, Staatsphilharmonie Nürnberg, and Swedish Radio Symphony. Other highlights include performances with Vienna Symphony, London Philharmonic and Bern Philharmonic.

Mazzola has conducted at major festivals including Aix-en-Provence, Festival de Radio France et Montpellier, Enescu Festival and Haydn Festival with ONDIF, Bregenzer Festspiele, Salzburg Festspiele, BBC Proms (with the Glyndebourne new production of Il barbiere di Siviglia), München Opernfestspiele, Rossini Opera Festival, Biennale of Venice, Wexford Opera Festival, Festival de Granada, and Les Chorégies d’Orange.

He works regularly with young musicians, among them Accademia Teatro alla Scala, Académie de l’Opéra national de Paris, Opéra Studio de l’Opéra national du Rhin, Accademia del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Ryan Opera Center, and Codarts of Rotterdam. He has given conducting masterclasses for the students of the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris and Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Lyon.

Renowned as a champion of bel canto opera, Mazzola is a specialist in French repertoire and early Verdi. He was Artistic and Music Director of the Orchestre National d’Île de France from 2012–19 and in 2018 was named a Chevalier de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres in recognition of his significant contribution to musical life in France. He has conducted bel canto works for The Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, Paris’s Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, and the major houses of Florence, Strasbourg, Berlin, Zurich, Moscow, and Tokyo, in addition to a historic Meyerbeer cycle for Deutsche Oper Berlin.

An accomplished interpreter of contemporary music, Mazzola commissioned and premiered several works with ONDIF and other major European orchestras. Opera credits include the world premiere of Colla’s Il processo (La Scala), Il re nudo by Luca Lombardi (Teatro dell’Opera di Roma), Medusa by Arnaldo de Felice (Bayerische Staatsoper), and Isabella by Azio Corghi (Rossini Opera Festival).

Mazzola was born in Barcelona and grew up in Milan where he studied violin and piano, earning diplomas in composition and orchestral conducting at the Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi of Milan.