Jonathan Webb, conductor
Music Director of the Camerata Strumentale Città di Prato
Jonathan Webb’s career has embraced a vast array of musical styles and genres both on the concert stage and in the lyric theatre where he has conducted more than eighty operas. He has collaborated with many of the world’s leading artists and has held a number of positions including Head of Music for Opera Ireland, Chorus Master of the Wexford Festival and Resident Conductor at the Israeli Opera in Tel Aviv where he led numerous productions including: Der Freischütz, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, Macbeth, Samson et Dalila, La Juive, Faust, Cenerentola, L’Itlaiana in Algeri, L’elisir d’amore, Lucia di Lammermoor, Jenufa, The Cunning Little Vixen. He is currently Music Director of the Camerata Strumentale Città di Prato, where he recently conducted Beethoven Symphony n.9 with the chorus of Maggio Musicale Fiorentino.
He is a frequent guest in Europe’s opera houses, among them: Berlin (Deutsche Oper) Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny, La forza del destino, Carmen; Vienna (Volksoper) Don Pasquale, Der Zigeunerbaron, Die Zauberflöte; Cologne La Traviata; Lisbon (Teatro Sao Carlos) Ein Florentinisches Tragodie, The Miserly Night, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, La Navarraise, Cavelleria Rusticana; Sevilla (Teatro Maestranza) The Rape of Lucretia; Marseille The Saint of Bleeker Street, Nice L’Histoire du Soldat; Dublin Le Nozze di Figaro, Falstaff; Tenerife The Turn of the Screw. In Italy he has conducted in Rome (Teatro dell’opera), Napoli (Teatro San Carlo) Elegy for Young Lovers, Cosi fan tutte; Florence (Maggio Musicale) The Turn of the Screw; Venice (Teatro La Fenice) Tancredi, Elegy for Young Lovers; Palermo (Teatro Massimo) Orfeo, Genova (Teatro Carlo Felice) The Rape of Lucretia, Peter Grimes, Billy Budd, Il Turco in Italia; Reggio Emilia, Bari (Teatro Petruzzelli) The Turn of the Screw, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bologna, Parma, Catania, Calgiari, Verona Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, Cosi fan tutte; Ravenna, Pisa, Lucca, Livorno, Trento Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Cremona, Como, Brescia, Ferrara The Death of Klinghoffer, Modena. He has worked frequently with the stage director Daniele Abbado and has enjoyed collaborations with many others including Goetz Friedrich, Hugo de Ana, Pier Luigi Pizzi, Robert Carsen, Graham Vick, David Poutney and David Alden.
At the invitation of Valery Gergiev he conducted Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk in a co-production between the Kirov Opera and the New Israeli Opera. He is frequently invited to conduct orchestras in Israel (Jerusalem Symphony, Israel Chamber Orchestra), Spain (Orquesta Sinfoncia de Galicia, Real Filharmonía de Galicia, RTVE Symphony Orchestra, Orquesta Ciudad de Granada) and Italy (Orchestra Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Orchestra Santa Cecilia di Roma). His festival appearances include Caesarea, A Coruna, Wexford, Caracalla, Settembre Musica with the orchestra of the Rai Torino, the Liturgica Festival in Jerusalem and recently an unforgettable performance of Britten’s Curlew River in Perugia.
Invited by Seiji Ozawa to work alongside him at the Saito Kinen Festival in Japan, Webb has led the festival orchestra and ensembles and toured Japan and China as cembalist with Ozawa for his Ongaku Juku project for young musicians. He is passionately committed to young musicians and recently conducted the Orchestra Giovanile Italiana in Stavinsky and Mahler in Rome and Florence. He has worked with the Young Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and he conducted the Orchestra e Coro Giovanili di Santa Cecilia in performances of Mendelssohn’s Oepdipus in Kolonos as part of ‘Colosseo 2000,’ re-opening Rome’s famous amphitheatre as a performance venue for the first time in 1500 years. He has given masterclasses to musicians of the Vietnam National Academy in Hanoi and in November 2014 he led Riccardo Muti’s Orchestra Cherubini in opera performances in Ravenna of works by Poulenc and Menotti.
He was the recipient of the “Premio Internazionale Ultimo 900 Pisa 2000 Nel Mondo” (November 2004), “Le Muse – Polimnia” by the Accademia Internazionale “Le Muse” of Florence for 2011 and the medal of the Associazione Pisana Amici Della Lirica in recognition of his work in Toscana with the theatres comprising the Città Lirica.
