Antonio Pappano: Portrait

Antonio Pappano has been announced the successor of Bernard Haitink as Music Director of the Royal Opera in London’s Covent Garden.
Since 1992, when he was named Music Director of the Théatre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels, he has been working with many of the most important theatres and orchestras throughout Europe and North America. Just to name a few: He spectacularly debuted at the Vienna Staatsoper in 1993 replacing Christoph von Dohnanyi at the last minute in a new “Siegfried” production, he is the Principal Guest Conductor of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, and in the following seasons he will be conducting the Munich Philharmonic and the Boston Symphony Orchestra as well as a new project for the Lyric Opera of Chicago. One of the 1999 highlights had been his debut in Bayreuth, conducting a new production of Lohengrin.

This event is the “climax” of this film. However, director János Darvas joins Antonio Pappano not only during his Lohengrin rehearsals in Bayreuth, but also at his latest projects in Firenze (Falstaff) and Brusssels (Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk) and in the process of a CD recording. Various excerpts are being shown and Antonio Pappano talks about his feelings, his work and his ambitions.