Daniela Candillari
Conductor
Conductor Daniela Candillari brings her “confidence and apparently inexhaustible verve” (The New York Times) to opera houses and concert stages throughout North America and internationally. She is renowned for guiding groundbreaking world premieres to the stage “with a sure hand” (The New York Times) as well as her “incisive leadership” (Wall Street Journal) of classical music’s most frequently performed masterpieces.
Candillari’s exciting 2025-2026 season of orchestra and opera engagements includes premieres with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Canadian Opera Company, London Philharmonic, Liverpool Philharmonic, and Sinfonieorchester Wuppertal. She will also continue long-term artistic relationships with Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, where she enters her fifth season as Principal Conductor, Music Academy of the West, and her alma mater, Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music.
Candillari’s 2024-2025 season included world premieres with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (Nina Shekhar’s Accordion Concerto) and Opera Theatre of Saint Louis (This House, by Ricky Ian Gordon, Lynn Nottage and Ruby Aiyo Gerber), and debuts with Kansas City Symphony, Tucson Symphony Orchestra and Louisiana Philharmonic, and a return to New Orleans Opera.
Her 2023-24 season opened with rave reviews for her “seamless” leadership (The New York Times) of two world premieres: 10 Days in a Madhouse by composer Rene Orth and librettist Hannah Moscovitch at Opera Philadelphia, winner of the Best New Opera Award by the Music Critics Association of North America; and Jeanine Tesori and George Brant’s Grounded with Washington National Opera at The Kennedy Center, a company debut. In previous seasons, she has conducted with the New York Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Minnesota Opera, Detroit Opera, and Orchestre Métropolitan Montreal.
Candillari grew up in Serbia and Slovenia. She holds a Doctorate in Musicology from the Universität für Musik in Vienna, a Master of Music in Jazz Studies from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, and a Master of Music and Bachelor’s degree in Piano Performance from the Universität für Musik in Graz.
