Sebastiano Rolli began his musical studies at a very young age with his father, a choir director, at the A. Boito Conservatory in Parma and the G. Verdi Conservatory in Milan. Alongside his studies in composition and chamber vocal music, he pursued research on the performance practice of 19th-century Italian repertoire. He was a lecturer in theatrical text interpretation for singers at the Mythos courses of the Teatro Alla Scala in Milan and the Arturo Toscanini Foundation in Parma; he supervised theses on the philological approach to staging Verdian melodrama with works dedicated to “Simon Boccanegra” and “Otello“. Over the past year, he was invited by the Dall’Abaco Conservatory in Verona where he held a master class on opera interpretation for young directors; by the National Donizetti Studies Institute to publish an essay in the Donizetti Studies journal published by Il Saggiatore concerning the musical performance practice in Donizetti‘s works; by the Verdi Studies Institute at the Teatro Regio in Parma where he spoke about interpretation issues of the score at the Conference dedicated to the theme of Verdian melodrama staging; he is the only orchestra conductor among the teaching staff of the Verdian Academy of the Teatro Regio in Parma; and this year is an Academic Fellow at the University of Southampton. His studies in musical dramaturgy with Marcello Conati led him to delve into the themes and techniques of the historicist approach to 19th-century Italian melodrama. Marcello Conati and Pierluigi Petrobelli guided him towards a conductor’s career that brought him to perform on the most important international stages, to the point of being considered today one of the most authoritative names regarding the stylistic in-depth study of classical and romantic melodrama (in 2021 he was the protagonist of the International Music Festival of Cartagena, conducting four concerts dedicated to Italian melodrama from the 17th to the 20th century as a reference interpreter of the repertoire). Dealing with philological and historicist approaches, he has conducted and recorded in absolute first performances the critical editions of Torquato Tasso, Maria de Rudenz, Rosmonda d’Inghilterra, Giovedi grasso by Donizetti (DVD Bongiovanni and Dynamic); La straniera by Bellini (DVD Bongiovanni); I lombardi alla prima crociata by Verdi (bringing the title to the Fenice in Venice for the first time since 1844 when it was conducted by Verdi himself).
He has conducted at the Donizetti Festival in Bergamo (Maria Stuarda, Torquato Tasso, Il trovatore, Maria de Rudenz, Rosmonda d’Inghilterra); at the Bellini Festival in Catania (La sonnambula, La straniera); at the Verdi Festival in Parma La traviata, Il trovatore and brought Falstaff back to the theater in Busseto in 2013, the bicentenary of the composer’s birth, with the La Scala Academy and Renato Bruson in the title role, with the sets and costumes used by Arturo Toscanini in 1913. Also at the VF, he conducted two commemorative concerts for the Maestro in 2022 and 2024. At the Teatro Regio in Parma, Lucia di Lammermoor, Roberto Devereux, and in 2019 he brought back the historic staging of Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera used in 1913 by Cleofonte Campanini. At the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, he conducted La sonnambula by Vincenzo Bellini, La traviata by Giuseppe Verdi, Rosmonda d’Inghilterra by Gaetano Donizetti, Il barbiere di Siviglia and L’italiana in Algeri by Gioacchino Rossini on tour in Muscat, Oman. His relationship with La Fenice in Venice strengthens this year, after having already conducted I lombardi and I due Foscari, with Verdi’s Attila. He conducted La traviata at the National Theater of Lima and a Recital with Juan Diego Florez, with whom he also realized four concerts in Mexico City, Dublin, Granada, Bratislava. He conducted Nabucco at the National Opera of Tel Aviv; Il barbiere di Siviglia and Don Pasquale at the Nouvelle Opera Fribourg and the Opera of Nancy; Macbeth at the National Opera of Dijon and the State Opera of Bratislava where he also conducted I puritani; at the National Theater of Tenerife he conducted Anna Bolena and Norma; he inaugurated the Petr Dvorsky Festival for four consecutive years in Jaromerice with the Bohemian National Orchestra and the Moravian National Orchestra; he conducted Don Carlo at the State Opera of Sofia; he conducted L’elisir d’amore at the Magdeburg Theater where he is currently conducting I Capuleti e i Montecchi simultaneously in the Theaters of Brescia, Como, Reggio Emilia, Cremona, Pavia. At the Arena Foundation of Verona, he conducted Maria Stuarda by Donizetti and La cenerentola by Gioacchino Rossini as well as two symphonic concerts; at the Lyric Theater of Cagliari La vedova allegra by Franz Lehar, Verdi‘s Four Sacred Pieces and Fauré‘s Requiem; for the Carlo Felice Theater in Genoa Lucia di Lammermoor in addition to a Recital with Mariella Devia; for the Theaters of Rovigo and Treviso Rigoletto; at the Teatro delle Muse in Ancona Giovedi grasso by Donizetti (absolute first performance in modern times on critical edition); for the Theatrical Marches Foundation Il trovatore; in the Pilotta Palace in Parma Aida; at the National Theater of Tirana Puccini‘s Il Trittico, Il trovatore and Fauré‘s Requiem; at the De Carolis Theater in Sassari I Pagliacci by Leoncavallo recorded for TV by Sky Classica; at the Theater of Lecco Cavalleria rusticana by Mascagni. In the Verdi Hall of the Milan Conservatory, he performed Die sieben Todsünden by Kurt Weill. He conducted Verdi’s Requiem Mass and Rossini’s Petite Messe solennelle for the seventh and tenth anniversary of Maestro Romano Gandolfi‘s death in Parma. He inaugurated the Maria Callas National Theater in Athens by conducting a lyric symphonic concert after having conducted a concert dedicated to Gioacchino Rossini in collaboration with the ROF of Pesaro.
He is the musical director of the UNIMI Orchestra in Milan, with which he dedicates himself to classical, romantic, and contemporary repertoire. In addition to performances of Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Fauré, Puccini, R. Strauss and Weill, he has interpreted absolute first performances by Maderna, Bettinelli and Parisi.
He has published two critical essays on the interpretations of Giuseppe Di Stefano (Azzali publishers) and on the figure of Giuseppe Verdi (Azzali publishers); his contributions are accepted in various miscellanies such as the one dedicated to Cleofonte Campanini for the hundred years since his death, which retraces the interpretive parabola of one of the greatest conductors of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Short essays are hosted in programs of national and international lyric seasons. He collaborates steadily with the culture page of the Gazzetta di Parma.
His concert activity takes him all over the world, from America to Asia, and to collaborate with the greatest names of the international panorama: Juan Diego Florez, Michele Pertusi, Mariella Devia, Sonia Ganassi, Daniela Dessì, Alessandro Corbelli, Alfonso Antoniozzi, Renato Bruson, Leo Nucci, Jessica Pratt, Luca Salsi, Francesco Meli and many others. He has collaborated with directors such as Mario Corradi, Francesco Bellotto, Francesco Micheli, Leo Muscato, Alessandro De Rosa, Andrea Cigni, Juan Font, Grisha Asagaroff, Plomen Kartalovv, Valentino Villa, Bepi Morassi, Andrea Bernard, Elisabetta Courir, Marina Bianchi, Massimo Gasparon, Valentina Carrasco, Valentina Escobar, Nicola Raab, Julien Chavaz, Henning Brockhaus.
