Constantine Kitsopoulos

Musical Director

Saturday, March 9th – 7:30 PM, Thursday, March 14th – 7:30PM

Constantine Kitsopouloshas made a name for himself as a conductor whose musical experiences comfortably span the worlds of opera and symphony, where he conducts in such venues as Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall and Royal Albert Hall, and musical theater, where he can be found leading orchestras on Broadway.  Kitsopoulos is in his sixth year as Music Director of the Queens Symphony Orchestra and continues as General Director of Chatham Opera, which he founded in 2005.  He serves as Music Director of the Festival of the Arts BOCA, an extraordinary multi-day cultural arts event for South Florida, as well as Music Director and Conductor of The Gershwins’ “Porgy and Bess”, the Tony-Award winning Broadway musical revival featuring Audra McDonald and Norm Lewis.

Highlights of Constantine Kitsopoulos’ 2012/13 season include engagements with the New Jersey Symphony and North Carolina Symphony, as well as the Boca Raton Symphonia in a performance of Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony. A frequent guest conductor at Indiana University, he leads the IU Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Schumann’s Fourth Symphony and the Opera Theater in a production of Verdi’s Falstaff.  In the summer of 2012, Kitsopoulos returned to the OK Mozart Festival, Houston Symphony and the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center.

His 2011/12 season included appearances at the Ravinia and Sun Valley festivals, Atlanta Symphony, Dallas Symphony, Little Orchestra Society (NY) and at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center with the Philadelphia Orchestra.  Highlights of his 2010/11 season included debuts with the Dallas, North Carolina, Charlotte and Tucson symphonies and the OK Mozart Festival.  In recent seasons, Kitsopoulos made debuts with the Tokyo Philharmonic and the Russian National Orchestra.  He has also led the Baltimore, Colorado, Detroit, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh and San Francisco symphony orchestras, as well as the Calgary Philharmonic, National Arts Centre Orchestra, Blossom Festival Orchestra and the New York Pops Orchestra at Carnegie Hall.

In addition to his symphonic work, Constantine Kitsopoulos maintains a busy opera schedule.  In the 2011/12 season, Kitsopoulos led the Indiana University Opera Theater in a production of Bolcom’s A View From the Bridge.  In 2010/11, he conducted productions of La Bohème at Baldwin-Wallace College and Die Fledermaus at the IU Opera Theater, where he first appeared in 2008/09 in a production of The Most Happy Fella.  Previous seasons’ operatic highlights include the Dicapo Opera Theatre’s productions of The Merry Widow, Gounod’s Faust and all three versions of Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, Chatham Opera’s debut production of Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors, Hong Kong Municipal Opera production of Carmen in both Hong Kong and Beijing, and Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice at Alice Tully Hall.  Kitsopoulos also served as Music Director and created the orchestrations for the world premiere production of Ed Dixon’s Fanny Hill at the Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut.

Kitsopoulos has also continued to show his ability and interest in performing new works and conducting a wide variety of genres.  He conducted the Red Bull Artsehcro, an orchestra consisting of students from the top conservatories and university music programs in the country, in a concert at Carnegie Hall featuring a program of world premieres by Raul Yanez and Laura Karpman. 

Website: www.kitsopoulos.com
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cBLUGQRHhvU

Photo Credits: Lisa Kohler