The Italian conductor Francesco Rosa was born in Padua, where he studied piano, organ, composition, and conducting. He studied composition with the composer Wolfang Dalla Vecchio, and conducting with Emil Tchakarov.
As one of the youngest tutors, he has worked in several Italian opera houses and festivals (Bologna, Venice, Verona, Rome, Florence, Torre del Lago, Savona, Mantova, Bassano, Bari, Padua, Trapani, Rovigo), and elsewhere (Santa Cruz in Tenerife, Nantes, Lugano, Teatro Real in Madrid), and at the same time, he collaborated with conductors such as Daniel Oren, Richard Bonynge, Nello Santi, Maurizio Arena, Angelo Campora, Peter Maag, Donato Renzetti, Gianfranco Masini, Massimo de Bernart. During that time, he performed as a pianist, accompanying renowned singers such as Katia Ricciarelli, Mara Zampieri, Raina Kabaivanska, Lucia Valentini, Paolo Gavanelli, Renato Bruson, Leo Nucci, Maria Luisa Nave, Giuseppe Giacomini, Gianfranco Cecchele, Mariella Devia, Roberto Scandiuzzi, Juan Diego Florez, etc.
His career as a conductor began in 1994, at the Teatro Municipal in the Spanish city of Vigo, where he conducted Verdi’s Rigoletto and Rossini’s Barber of Seville. In the following years, he conducted in many Italian opera houses (Padova, Treviso, Rovigo, Venice, Bologna, Verona, Macerata, Trieste, Rome, Naples, Palermo, Sassari, Florence), as well as abroad (Santa Cruz in Tenerife, Constanta in Dominican Republic), at the New National Theatre and Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Otsu, Osaka, Nagoya, Beijing, Canton and Shenzhen).
He was a guest conductor in various European cultural centres, including Belgrade, Bucharest, Timisoara, Nice, Sofia, Maribor, Ljubljana, Skopje, Kiev, Dnipropetrovsk, Odessa, Yekaterinburg, St. Petersburg, etc. His repertoire is extremely rich and various in style. Nevertheless, the Italian belcanto operas seem to be prevalent (Lucia di Lammermoor, L’elisir d’amore, Don Pasquale, Rita, La sonnambula, Norma, The Barber of Seville, L’italiana in Algeri, Il turco in Italia), followed by Verdi’s masterpieces (Nabucco, Ernani, I due Foscari, Macbeth, Attila, Simon Boccanegra, Luisa Miller, Stiffelio, Rigoletto, Il trovatore, La traviata, Un ballo in maschera, La forza del destino, Don Carlos, Aida, and Requiem), as well as works by Puccini (Manon Lescaut, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, Turandot, La bohème, Suor Angelica, Il tabarro, La fanciulla del West).
He also conducted Andrea Chénier and Fedora, Massenet’s opera Manon, Don Quixote and Werther, Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice, Bizet’s Carmen, Menotti’s The Medium, Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana, Leoncavallo’s I pagliacci, Zandonai’s opera Una partita, as well as Lakmé by Delibes, The Tales of Hoffmann by Offenbach, The Queen of Spades by Tchaikovsky, and Adriana Lecouvreur by Cilea.
Between 2000 and 2003, he was assistant conductor to Daniel Oren (for productions of the Opéra Bastille in Paris, Théâtre du Chatelet, Metropolitan Opera in New York, etc.).
From June 2004 to July 2008, he was the music director and conductor of the Neapolitan Opera San Carlo, and since 2008, he has been a guest conductor at the Opera in Sofia.
