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Over the years, Maestro Varviso has held many posts. He has been music director of the WŸrttemberg State Opera, Stuttgart State Theatre and Stockholm Royal Opera, and chief conductor at the Paris Opera. He has often been a guest at the Bayreuth Festival, where he directed many operas including The Flying Dutchman, Lohengrin and Die Meistersinger von NŸrnberg, as well as at the Salzburg Festival and Glyndebourne, the site of his British debut.
In recent seasons, he has become closely associated with his refined and luminous performances of Puccini operas. As a permanent guest conductor at the Flanders Opera, he has earned high acclaim for his interpretations of Manon Lescaut, Tosca, Turandot, La Boheme, Madama Butterfly, La Fanciulla del West and Il Trittico. Also at the Flanders Opera, he has directed Wagner's Parsifal and Lohengrin, Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier and Daphne, Mozart's Don Giovanni, Verdi's Requiem, Stravinsky's Firebird and Ravel's Sheherazade.
In addition to conducting, Silvio Varviso studied piano, violin, clarinet, trumpet and percussion in his native Zurich. After graduating from the Zurich Conservatory, he continued his conducting studies in Vienna with Clemens Krauss. He made his debut conducting Mozart's Die Zauberflute at the Stadttheater in St. Gallen, and went on to Basel where he served as music and artistic director of the Basel Stadttheater. Admired for his interpretations of Mozart and the bel canto operas of the early nineteenth century, he was also on the podium for a number of important premieres of contemporary works, among them the first German-language performance of Prokofiev's The Fiery Angel.
Throughout Maestro Varviso's years in Basel, he was in great demand as guest conductor of many European orchestras, festivals and opera companies. He led Handel's Giulio Cesare at the Schwetzingen Festival, and the world premiere of Titus Feuerfuchs by Heinrich Sutermeister at the Brussels World's Fair. He also made guest appearances in Berlin and Paris, and made his American debut with the San Francisco Opera. He made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera debut in 1961 conducting Lucia di Lammermoor with Joan Sutherland, also making her Metropolitan Opera debut that season. He returned to the Metropolitan Opera in 1983 for Die WalkŸre, and in the following season led performances of The Barber of Seville.
His numerous recordings, many of which have won prestigious awards, are available from London Records and Philips Classics. (September 2003)
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