Nir Kabaretti

In recent years Nir Kabaretti has established himself with growing international prestige, with extensive experience in symphonic and operatic repertoire. In 2018 he was appointed music director of the Israel Sinfonietta Be'er Sheva, and since 2014 he has been music director of the Southwest Florida Symphony. After graduating from the Vienna University of Music, he became a Collaborating Maestro and Chorus Director at the Vienna State Opera and the Salzburg Festival. He later served as assistant music director at the Teatro Real in Madrid and personal assistant to Maestro Zubin Mehta at the Teatro del Maggio Musicale in Florence. He has collaborated with some of the most distinguished conductors, including Claudio Abbado, Lorin Maazel, Seiji Ozawa, Valery Gergiev and Riccardo Muti. He received the America-Israel Cultural Foundation scholarship for young conductors and won the Forum Junger Kunstler Conducting Competition in 1993. In 1994 he was a finalist in the International Conducting Competition in Douai, France. Maestro Kabaretti has a busy international career. His collaborations include the Philharmonic Orchestras of Israel, Tokyo, Zagreb, Belgrade, Bogotá, and Rochester, the Orchestra of the Teatro dell'Opera in Rome, the Orchestra Filarmonica Arturo Toscanini, the Orchestre Philharmonie Royale de Liege, the Chamber Orchestras of Philadelphia, Mantua, Lausanne, and Vienna, the National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra, the Orquesta Filarmonica de Buenos, the Orquestre National du Theatre du Capitole de Toulouse, the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano, the Bochumer Symphoniker, the Jerusalem Symphony, and the Real Orquesta Sinfonica de Sevilla. Kabaretti's opera and ballet experience includes productions at Teatro alla Scala in Milan, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence, Teatro Real in Madrid, Israel Opera, Lausanne Opera, Avenches Opera Festival, New National Theatre in Tokyo, Bregenz Festival and Expo 2000 in Hanover, and Teatro San Carlo in Naples. In 2019 Kabaretti made his debut at the Puccini Festival in Torre del Lago, Italy with Madama Butterfly. He has worked with some of the world's most sought-after musicians, including Lang Lang, Placido Domingo, Joyce Di Donato, Angel Joy Blue, Vadim Repin, Gilles Apap, Helene Grimaud and Andre Watts. Kabaretti's engagements in recent seasons include: a series of concerts in Fort Meyers and Liege with the Orchestre Philarmonique and on tour in Belgium, then in Santa Barbara, Michigan, Bloomington, in Parma with the Orchestra Toscanini, in Israel with the Israel Sinfonietta, in Palermo with the Orchestra Sinfonica Siciliana, in Bari with the Orchestra Sinfonica di Bari and in Padua with the Orchestra di Padova e del Veneto; Die Fledermaus in Bari; Madama Butterfly at the Puccini Festival in Torre del Lago; L'Elisir d'amore at the Lausanne Opera; Tosca in Jesi; Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet in Stockholm; and The Nutcracker in Rome. On the program: Tosca at Metz Metropole; La Traviata at Teatro Verdi in Pisa and Teatro Pergolesi in Jesi; the diptych Infra-En kopp kaffe at the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm; and Giselle at Teatro Massimo in Palermo.