Heralded by Opera News as “clearly a name to watch,” conductor Pacien Mazzagatti has already garnered considerable critical acclaim for his work conducting opera in New York City.
Mr. Mazzagatti made his conducting debut at New York’s Dicapo Opera in 2003 leading performances of Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci. He was immediately re-engaged and over the course of next two seasons he conducted Madama Butterfly, Falstaff, The Magic Flute, La traviata, and the New York premiere of Robert Ward’s Claudia Legare. In 2005 he led the Dicapo orchestra, the combined Fairfield Chorale, Amor Artis and Dicapo choirs and soloists from the Bolshoi and Metropolitan Opera in a performance of Rachmaninoff’s choral symphony The Bells and his seldom-heard opera Francesca da Rimini. In his review for The New York Times Bernard Holland remarked “The chorus sent out warm gales of sound…The orchestra was bathed in a lovely indeterminate haze…The young Pacien Mazzagatti conducted all of these people with energy and considerable effect.”
This past season Mr. Mazzagatti returned to Dicapo to conduct Puccini’s Manon Lescaut. In his review of the production for the British publication Musical Opinion, veteran theater critic Clive Barnes wrote “The young and promising American conductor Pacien Mazzagatti did splendidly.”
In addition to his conducting in New York, Mr. Mazzagatti has been a regular conductor for the New England touring company National Lyric Opera. With National Lyric he has led critically acclaimed performances of Faust, Madama Butterfly, La bohème and La traviata.
In 2004 he was selected by the Nilas Martins dance company to arrange, conduct and play rarely-performed songs, orchestral works, and arias of Giacomo Puccini for an original dance piece titled Puccini Passion. Having already led three successful presentations for New York audiences, Mr. Mazzagatti will continue his musical leadership on the company’s upcoming European tour.
Future engagements include Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette at Dicapo opera theater and Mozart’s Cosí fan tutte at Sarasota Opera. In the autumn of 2008 he will travel to Szeged, Hungary to conduct Robert Ward’s The Crucible for the Mezzo Opera Festival in a production that will be broadcast to thirty eight countries across Europe on the French television network Mezzo.
An accomplished pianist, Mr. Mazzagatti began his musical studies at a very early age. At nineteen years old he completed his Bachelor of Music degree from Temple University in piano under the tutelage of Alexander Fiorillo. Subsequently he earned a Masters degree and Doctorate at The Manhattan School of music where he was a student of the eminent American pianist Constance Keene. Mr. Mazzagatti has won several prizes at national and international piano competitions including: The Stravinsky Awards International Piano Competition, The International Young Artists Competition, and the Concorso Pianistico Città di Senigallia. He studied conducting privately with Giampaolo Bracali.
