Steven Mercurio

CNSO Music Director

Maestro Steven Mercurio, an internationally acclaimed conductor and composer and currently Music Director of the Czech National Symphony Orchestra, served as Music Director of the Spoleto Festival for five years and Principal Conductor for the Opera Company of Philadelphia. A sought-after collaborator on many award-winning recordings, arrangements and film projects, he received his master’s degree from the Juilliard School. 

He has conducted more than sixty operas for the stage in seven different languages. His engagements have taken him to many of the world’s best loved opera houses, including the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma; Teatro Bellini, Catania; Teatro Filarmonico, Verona; Teatro Reggio, Torino; Teatro Verdi, Trieste; Teatro Massimo, Palermo; Theatre de la Monnaie in Brussels, Bonn Opera, the English National Opera, as well as the American opera companies of San Francisco, Washington, Philadelphia, Seattle, Detroit, Opera Pacific, Florida Grand, Pittsburgh, Dallas and Cincinnati. In addition to Maestro Mercurio’s operatic performances, his symphonic commitments have taken him across the globe; he has appeared throughout Europe and the United Kingdom, Australia, the Far East and the United States.

Maestro Mercurio has conducted various operatic and symphonic television broadcasts, including the internationally acclaimed Christmas in Vienna series featuring the celebrated Three Tenors (Carreras – Domingo – Pavarotti). Major telecasts have also included Maestro Mercurio conducting the RAI’s production of Christmas from the Church of San Francesco in Assisi, La Bohème in Cagliari, performances of Berlioz’s Requiem, Scriabin’s Prometheus, Mahler’s Second Symphony, an evening of music by Chick Corea and Mozart, along with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 with his own Czech National Symphony Orchestra for ARTE to mark the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth.

Maestro Mercurio’s recording of Strauss’s Metamorphosen and the latter’s tone poem Death and Transfiguration with the Czech National Symphony Orchestra was recently released on the Audiophile Recordings label. As a composer, Maestro Mercurio’s oeuvre includes songs, chamber works and pieces for large orchestra. His wide-ranging orchestral work For Lost Loved Ones was given its world premiere by Zubin Mehta and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Mercurial Overture was performed in its world premiere by the Oslo Philharmonic at a concert for Médecins Sans Frontières honouring the Nobel Peace Prize-winners, broadcast live on television. Maestro Mercurio’s symphony A Grateful Tail is based on American playwright Eugene O’Neill’s Last Will and Testament of Silverdene Emblem O’Neill; the work was premiered in Prague in 2013. 

Maestro Mercurio is an acclaimed and sought-after arranger and collaborator and has created arrangements for a wide range of performers across multiple genres including Sting and Chick Corea. Most recently, he served as arranger, conductor and producer for Andrea Bocelli’s best-selling recording Believe. In 2022, he produced, arranged and conducted superstar crossover cellist HAUSER’s new recording for Sony Masterworks, The Player.

 

Photo: Jan Malý / fotomaly.cz