GUIDO MANCUSI

Principal Conductor

The Austrian-Italian conductor Guido Mancusi was born in Naples in 1966. Raised in a musical household, he received his first piano instruction from Nino Rota. After the death of his father, the family moved to Vienna. Mancusi became a soprano soloist in the Vienna Boys' Choir and attended the Vienna Musikgymnasium. After graduation, Mancusi studied bassoon and voice at the Conservatory of the City of Vienna, as well as composition and conducting at the Vienna Music University. He completed his studies with honors.

His first engagements as music director and choir director were at the City Theater Coburg (FRG), the Theater an der Wien, the Raimund Theater and the City Theater St. Pölten.
To perfect his training as a conductor, he became assistant to Riccardo Muti at La Scala in Milan, assistant in Bayreuth, and assistant to Adam Fischer.
As a conductor, he was a guest in Graz and Kiel. It was in Klagenfurt with Madame Butterfly that Mancusi finally attracted the attention of director Dietmar Pflegerl who made the young conductor the principal conductor, a position Mancusi then held for five years. There he expanded his repertoire and gained important leadership experience. His successes in Klagenfurt also allowed Mancusi to gain greater international attention.

In 1998, Mancusi took over the position of Principal Conductor of the Schoenbrunn Palace Orchestra and in this role, founded the Chamber Opera Schoenbrunn.
With increasing prominence, he was invited on major tours in the following years and so Mancusi conducted in Moscow, Tel Aviv, Helsinki, Stockholm, Rome, Toronto, in the USA, in South America, and finally in Japan and South Korea. In his home country, he conducted at the KlangBogen Wien and the Wiener Festwochen.
Eventually he became permanent guest conductor at the Volksoper Vienna, where he has been an integral and important part of the theater since 2014. In 2017, Mancusi received the appointment as Principal Guest Conductor of the BDZ Orchestra in Budapest and in 2018 as Music Director of the Seefestspiele Mörbisch.

From the earliest days of his musical life, Mancusi also composed. Today his compositions include masses, passions, cantatas, orchestral works, film scores, two operettas, a ballet, and an opera. Premieres and CD recordings as well as commissions prove Mancusi's place in the cosmos of contemporary composers.
Mancusi has always considered himself a theater person, as a creator and enabler of fantastic worlds. He understands the division of the words music theater as a unity. As a composer he creates dramatic works, as a conductor he is their lawyer. An interwoven life that cannot be put in a box. This is the life he wants, and he can have it too. Composers and conductors want to give something to people - this is an ideal and Mancusi has been following this ideal for over 30 years.