antonio florio

Artistic Director and Honorary President of the Centro di Musica Antica Pietà de' Turchini, Antonio Florio graduated in cello and piano from the Conservatory in Bari, his home town, and went on to study composition with Nino Rota and Francesco d'Avalos, while giving particular attention to Baroque performing practice on period instruments. In 1981 he founded the group 'Il Fugilotio' and in 1987 the vocal and instrumental ensemble Cappella della Pietà de' Turchini, with which he has appeared in the most prestigious festivals and theatres in Italy and Europe and made a number of recordings.
In recent years, in addition to his busy concert career, he has devoted himself to detailed musicological research, exploring above all the repertoire of Neapolitan music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with a close examination of the surviving operas of Francesco Provenzale (maestro di cappella of the Conservatorio de la Pietà de' Turchini until 1701): Lo schiavo di sua moglie (performed at the Teatro Massimo in Palermo), La colomba ferita (staged at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, the Teatro Zarzuela in Madrid and the Teatro Arriaga in Bilbao) and La Stellidaura vendicante (performed in the 1996 operatic season in Bari).
Other highlights of his conducting career have included: La finta cameriera by Gaetano Latilla (1738) for the 1997 operatic season in Bari; Leonardo Vinci's Li zite 'ngalera (1722) for the Cité de la Musique in Paris, the Teatro Comunale in Ferrara, the Teatro Lope de Vega in Seville and the Palau de la Musica in Barcelona, in 1999; and Giovanni Paisiello's Pulcinella vendicato nel ritorno di Marechiaro for the Teatro San Carlo in Naples and the Teatro Rosalba Castro of La Coruña. In 1999 and 2000 he conducted the Royal Orchestra of Galicia in Santiago de Compostela, in Giovanni Battista Pergolesi's La serva padrona and Stabat Mater.
A no less exacting aspect of his activity has been teaching: he has already led seminars and masterclasses on Baroque vocal style and chamber music for the Centre de Musique Baroque in Versailles, the Fondation Royaumont and the Toulouse Conservatoire. He holds the chair of Chamber Music at the Conservatorio San Pietro a Majella in Naples.
Antonio Florio is currently engaged in aiding the rebirth of Francesco Cavalli's opera Statira, Principessa di Persia, which was premiered at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples in January 2004, in a production by Paul Curran.
Among his diverse projects for the 2004-2005 season are Leonardo Vinci's opera La Partenope at the Crotone Festival in Italy and the Festival of the Ionian Islands in Greece; a tour of South America in October 2004; a recital with Patrizia Ciofi in 2005, followed by a tour of France; and Rossini's Missa di Gloria at Clermont-Ferrand in April 2005.