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 2024-2025 season of orchestra and opera engagements includes two world premieres in St. Louis, where she enters her fourth season as Principal Conductor at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. In celebration of their 50th anniversary season, she conducts the company’s 44th world premiere, This House, with music by Ricky Ian Gordon and libretto by Pulitzer Prize-winner Lynn Nottage and her daughter, Ruby Aiyo Gerber. Earlier in the year, she leads the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in the world premiere of Nina Shekhar’s Accordion Concerto, an SLSO commission, featuring accordionist Hanzhi Wang, on a program with Samuel Barber’s School for Scandal overture and Antonín Dvořák’s “New World” symphony.

Candillari’s season opens in Belgium with Puccini’s Madama Butterfly with Opera Ballet Vlaanderen. She returns to New York to lead Trinity Church’s resident orchestra NOVUS in the East Coast Premiere of Gabriel Kahane’s emergency shelter intake form, followed by appearances leading concerts at the Juilliard School and the Manhattan School of Music. Other 2024-2025 highlights include a return to New Orleans Opera to conduct Camille Saint-Saëns’ rarely performed French masterpiece, Samson and Delilah, and debuts with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, Kansas City Symphony, and Tucson Symphony Orchestra.

As a composer, Candillari has been commissioned by established artists including instrumentalists from the Boston, Cleveland, Detroit, and Pittsburgh Symphonies, as well as the three resident orchestras of Lincoln Center: the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, and the New York City Ballet. She is deeply involved with Music Academy of the West’s programming for young artists and has recently participated in master classes and discussions at DePaul University, Chicago Humanities Festival, and Valissima Institute.