JAMES CON LON | Conductor James Conlon has served as principal conductor of OSN Rai since October 2016. He has been Music Director ofOpera in Los Angeles since 2006. He has been Music Director of the Ravinia Festival, summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (2005-2015), Principal Conductor of the Opéra de Paris (1995-2004), General Music Director of the City of Cologne-where he was to head of the Gürzenich-Orchester and of theOpera of Cologne (1989-2002)-Music Director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic (1983-1991) and of the Cincinnati May Festival (1979-2016), the oldest choral festival in the United States. Since his debut in 1976, he has conducted more than 280 performances at the New York Metropolitan, including most recently, in 2014, Šostakovič's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. He has conducted at La Scala in Milan, Staatsoper in Vienna, Mariinsky Theater in San Pietroburgo, Lyric Opera in Chicago, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Opera in Rome (in summer 2015 he performed Tchaikovsky's La dama di Picche there), Teatro Real in Madrid, and ROH in London. AtOpera in Los Angeles since his appointment, he has directed 52 productions and 335 performances, including the first performance in that city of _Ring des Nibelungen _in 2010. He has devoted himself to rediscovering the works of composers obscured by the Nazi regime. He has taught in the schools of the New World Symphony, Ravinia Festival, Aspen Music Festival, Tanglewood Music Center and at the Juilliard School in New York. He has recorded for Emi, Sony Classical, Erato, Capriccio, Telarc and Decca. He has won four Grammy Awards. In 2002 he was awarded, at the hands of then President of the French Republic Jacques Chirac, the Légion d'Honneur. Future engagements, in addition to stable engagements withOpera in Los Angeles and the RAI Symphony Orchestra, with which he participates to radio and television broadcasts, include: Falstaff at the Vienna Staatsoper, Macbeth with Placido Domingo at the Teatro Real in Madrid, Billy Budd at theOpera in Rome, Der Fliegender Holländer in Concert form with the Orchestra Rai in Turin, and concerts with Orchesta Nacional de Espagne, Orchestre de Paris, the Philharmonic Orchestras of Rotterdam and Los Angeles, and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. He conducted the 2016 New Year's Concert at La Fenice in Venice, broadcast live on Rai Uno. Don Giovanni is the third title in the Mozart/from Ponte trilogy that he is performing at the Spoleto Festival as part of a three-year project.

Born to Rome, he attended La Sapienza University's Bachelor of Arts in Literature and Philosophy and the acting course at the "Silvio d'Amico" National Academy of Dramatic Art. He was assistant director to Luca Ronconi and Luchino Visconti, with whom he collaborated intensively. For RAI he directed the film_ L'uomo che ho ucciso_ from the novel 1912+1 by Leonardo Sciascia, screenplay by Domenico Rafele, Pierre Dumayet and the series Avvocati by Giancarlo de Cataldo. For the cinema he directed: Un cuore semplice, screenplay by Cesare Zavattini from the short story by Gustave Flaubert, awarded the David di Donatello, the Rizzoli Prize, the Saint Vincent Prize and the Nastro d'argento; Caccia alla Vedova, screenplay by Enrico Medioli from Goldoni's Vedova scaltra; Tosca e altre due from Franca Valeri's comedy of the same name, screenplay by Enrico Medioli. For the theater he has staged plays by classic and contemporary authors such as Pirandello, Strindberg, Goldoni, Carlo Bernari, Francesca Sanvitale, Enzo Siciliano, Franca Valeri, Cesare Musatti, Natalia Ginzburg and Corrado Augias. For the Teatro dell'Opera in Rome he staged Giacomo Puccini's Madama Butterfly. For Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto he staged _Gogo no eiko _by Hanz Werner Henze; _Amelia al ballo _by Gian Carlo Menotti; Il giro di vite by Benjanim Britten; The Piano Upstairs by John Weidman; _Così fan tutte, Le nozze di Figaro _and Don Giovanni by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; _Minotauro _by Silvia Colasanti. As an actor, he participated to: Measure for Measure and _Riccardo III _by Shakespeare, directed by Luca Ronconi; Nina by André Roussin, directed by Bernard Murat; Alcool written and directed from Adriana Asti; Testori's Maria Brasca, directed by Andrée Ruth Shammah; The Insertion by Natalia Ginzburg, directed by Giorgio Ferrara; _The Chairs _by Jonesco, directed by Tullio Pericoli; Danza macabra by August Strindberg, directed by Luca Ronconi. He was Director of the Italian Cultural Institute in Paris and President of the Forum des Instituts Culturels Etrangers à Paris. From 2008 to 2012 he was President and Artistic Director of the Foundation Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, where he now serves as Artistic Director.

Born to Tunis in '52, René de Ceccatty lives to Paris; he has published some 20 novels (including La Sentinelle du rêve, L'Or et la poussière, l'Accompagnement, Aimer, L'Hôte invisible, Un renoncement, Objet d'amour, Enfance, dernier chapitre, Mes années japonaises).

He has translated many Italian authors (Petrarch, Dante, Leopardi, Casanova, Saba, Moravia, Pasolini, Bonaviri, Penna, Naldini) and Japanese authors (in collaboration with Ryôji Nakamura: Ôé, Abé, Sôseki, Tanizaki, Mishima). He won the 2008 Mondello Prize for his translations of Moravia, the 2018 Elsa Morante Prize for his biography of the writer, and the 2018 Dante-Ravenna Prize for his translation of The Divine Comedy. He has written biographies of Pasolini, Maria Callas, Sibilla Aleramo, Moravia, and Elsa Morante. Five of his books have been translated into Italian so far: La stella rubino (Costa and Nolan), Sibilla Aleramo (Mondadori), La parola amore (Archinto), Alberto Moravia (Bompiani), _Amicizia e passione _(Archinto). She also writes extensively for the theater. He has worked with Claudia Cardinale, Isabelle Adjani, Anouk Aimée, and Adriana Asti, who confided in him her memories(Ricordare e dimenticare Portaparole 2016) brought to the stage from Andrée-Ruth Shammah in _Memorie di Adriana _at the 60th Spoleto Festival. She often works with Argentine director Alfredo Arias. Their plays have been staged in Italy(Penis of the Heart of a French Cat, Concha Bonita, Pale Object of Desire, Madame Pink). His collaboration with Giorgio Ferrara began twelve years ago to Paris with Solus ad solam, followed from Heaven and Blood, Albert and Moravia, Zaide. to Spoleto has come several times to presenting shows, including Anouk Aimée reads Moravia. Also for the Spoleto Festival, in 2017 he collaborated with Giorgio Ferrara on the dramaturgy of the new production ofopera _Don Giovanni _by Mozart, in 2018, on the drafting of the libretto ofopera _Minotauro _by Silvia Colasanti. He wrote the additional words for an unpublished augmented version of Auber´s Fra Diavolo created later in the world premiere at the Teatro dell´Opera in Rome in October 2017. In 2019, as a playwright, he collaborated to two new productions at the Spoleto Festival: Proserpine by Silvia Colasanti on a poem by Mary Shelley, directed by Giorgio Ferrara and _La ballata della serva Zerlina _by Hermann Broch with Adriana Asti and directed by Lucinda Childs.