NEW YORK – Antonio Pappano has gone underground since leaving The Royal Opera for the London Symphony Orchestra.
“Now, more often than not, I take the Tube, which I never did when I was at the opera house because I had a car service,” he said. “This is a more streamlined organization, if you like.”
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A 65-year-old conductor who was Covent Garden’s music director from 2002-24, Pappano succeeded Simon Rattle as the LSO’s chief conductor last September and has a quick commute from his home in Hampstead to the LSO's Barbican Centre base. He is leading the orchestra on a 13-concert U.S. tour to California, Florida and New York that culminates this week with its first Carnegie Hall appearances since 2005.
“Everything is very much based on the voice for Tony because of his opera background,” said Maxine Kwok, an LSO violinist since 2001 and a member of its board. “So it all comes down to emotions and how you would phrase things if you were singing.”
Pappano was born in England and moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut, with his family when he was 13. A son of a voice teacher, he became a rehearsal pianist at the Connecticut Grand Opera at 17 and then at New York City Opera at 21. He worked as assistant to Daniel Barenboim on “Tristan,” the Ring Cycle and “Parsifal” at the Bayreuth Festival and debuted in 1991 at the Lyric Opera of Chicago and in 1994 at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, where Barenboim was music director.
“I probably shouldn’t have been in front of some of the big symphony orchestras, Chicago Symphony, for sure. That came a little bit too soon,” Pappano said. ”But I survived and then hopefully you learn from those mistakes of timing. In terms of the long-term positions I’ve had, I don’t think I’ve put a foot wrong.”
He was music director of Oslo’s Den Norske Opera from 1990-92, Brussels’ Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie from 1992-2002 and Rome’s Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia from 2005-23, often working with his wife, vocal coach Pamela Bullock. While Pappano grew up in the U.S., he has concentrated his career in Europe.
“There’s a lot of turmoil in the States, well, all over the world at the moment, and I don’t miss that,” he said. “I’m concerned about the way America is going, if I’m honest. I also worry about the degree to which art in general is treated like some kind of elitist domain to an even greater degree than it is over here. We have to fight that sentiment over here because the easiest thing to cut in a budget is the arts budget.”
Clive Gillinson, then LSO’s managing director, engaged Pappano for a 1996 recording of Puccini’s “La Rondine” with Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Roberto Alagna at London’s Abbey Road Studios.
“I thought he should be given a chance as a symphonic conductor because there was very little track record,” said Gillinson, now Carnegie Hall’s executive director. “To be honest, in those early days, I didn’t think he was a great symphonic conductor. It took him time."
Pappano led his first LSO concert performance the following January at the Barbican.
“It was clear right from the get-go that he kind of got the LSO and we very much got him,” said Neil Percy, a principal percussion who has been with the LSO since 1990. “It’s in his soul, man. You can see it in his skin. He just understands opera kind of like no other conductor that I’ve ever been fortunate enough to work with.”
Pappano debuted at The Royal Opera in Puccini’s “La Bohème” in 1990 and was 32 when he became its youngest music director, following distinguished predecessors Rafael Kubelik, Georg Solti, Colin Davis and Bernard Haitink.
Pappano announced in March 2021 he was switching to the LSO, an ensemble known for its work on movie soundtracks that include “Star Wars.” Rattle had moved to the LSO in 2017 and decided he wanted to switch in 2023 to Munich’s Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.
“We're chalk and cheese, as they say in England," Pappano explained.
“With Simon Rattle there’s an incredible precision in the approach to the playing,” said Kathryn McDowell, who succeeded Gillinson as the LSO’s managing director. “It’s a different sound with Antonio Pappano... it’s got a real sort of sheen.”
Pappano is continuing to lead Covent Garden's production premieres of Barrie Kosky’s staging of the Ring, with “Die Walküre” opening May 1, “Siegfried” next season and “Götterdämmerung in 2026-27, but his successor, Jakub Hrůša, will be in charge of the full cycle in 2027-28.
When Pappano conducted the finale of Maher's Symphony No. 1 in Naples, Florida, last week, he was struck by a realization.
“I’ve never had anything like this under my hands. What a lucky sod I am,” he recalled thinking. “That life underneath every note, that was always the calling card of this orchestra. If you could stoke that flair, that theatricality that they have, it’s quite something.”