Sir Antonio Pappano
Chief Conductor Designate
Sir Antonio Pappano will take up the role of Chief Conductor of the LSO in September 2024, after becoming Chief Conductor Designate in September 2023. He first collaborated with the Orchestra in 1996 at Abbey Road Studios for a recording of Puccini’s opera La rondine. ‘I’ll never forget the first down beat, when the orchestra just exploded with activity and panache and derring-do,’ recalls Pappano. ‘It felt like I’d gotten into a Ferrari and pushed the gas pedal down!’
Sir Antonio Pappano became Music Director of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in 2002, a position he will hold until the end of the 2023/24 season, and was Music Director of the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome between 2005 and 2023. In 2012 he was made a Knight of the British Empire for his services to music, and in 2015 he was named the 100th recipient of the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Gold Medal, the body’s highest honour.
