Richard Bonynge

Career Trajectory

Beginning as a concert pianist trained at the Royal College of Music in London, Richard Bonynge unexpectedly became a conductor in 1962 when he stepped in to lead the Santa Cecilia Orchestra in Rome, launching a legendary career devoted to the resurrection and scholarly interpretation of bel canto and nineteenth-century French opera. Over six decades at the world's premier opera houses—the Metropolitan Opera, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, and La Scala—he established himself as the definitive authority on Rossini, Bellini, and Donizetti, while simultaneously becoming a meticulous scholar of nineteenth-century ballet music, recording the complete Tchaikovsky and Delibes ballet canon. Now in his mid-nineties, Bonynge remains an active mentor, recording artist, and competition judge, a living embodiment of operatic erudition whose influence on singers, conductors, and the repertoire itself remains immeasurable.