Henrik Nánási Returns to Conduct the Orchestra of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino

Scheduled for Friday, October 24, 2025, at 8:00 PM in the Zubin Mehta Hall, the program includes Orpheus and Tasso: Lament and Triumph by Franz Liszt, as well as the Concerto for Orchestra by Béla Bartók.

Florence, October 21, 2025 – On Friday, October 24 at 8:00 PM, Maestro Henrik Nánási takes the podium in Mehta hall, leading the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino Orchestra for a symphonic concert as part of the Teatro del Maggio’s autumn concert season.

The concert opens with two works by Franz Liszt. First on the program is Orpheus, composed in 1854 and conceived as an overture for a performance of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice (in the version reworked and re-orchestrated by Berlioz). The piece stands on its own as a musical meditation on the myth of Orpheus: a mythical figure straddling the human and divine, embodying music’s power as a civilizing, cathartic, and spiritual force.

Next comes Tasso: Lament and Triumph. Composed in 1849 and revised several times between 1851 and 1854, the work reflects Liszt’s engagement with one of Romanticism’s favored figures: Torquato Tasso, the Renaissance poet who was both celebrated and marginalized, a restless genius and a martyr to his own inner world. Liszt originally conceived this symphonic poem as the overture to the five-act drama Torquato Tasso by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, written in 1789 and staged in Weimar in 1849 for the centenary of the poet’s birth.

The evening concludes with the Concerto for Orchestra by Béla Bartók. Completed in just over two months between August and October 1943 during a retreat in the mountain silence of Saranac Lake, New York, the Concerto for Orchestra marks the beginning of Bartók’s American period. The world premiere took place on December 1, 1944, in Boston, conducted by Serge Koussevitzky, and was met with unanimous acclaim.

Maestro Nánási returns to the Maggio following the success of Roméo et Juliette, performed during the 84th Maggio Musicale Festival in spring 2022.

After studying piano and composition at the Béla Bartók Conservatory in Budapest, Nánási enrolled at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, where he studied orchestral conducting, concert techniques, and composition. He worked as a musical assistant at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London under Antonio Pappano and at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo, also performing as a pianist and vocal coach. After early positions in Klagenfurt and Augsburg, he became Principal Conductor at the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz in Munich. In 2012, he moved to Berlin, where he served as General Music Director of the Komische Oper until 2017.

He has conducted in major international opera houses, including the Metropolitan Opera House in New York (Iolanta, Bluebeard's Castle); Covent Garden (Turandot, Il barbiere di Siviglia, Salome, Simon Boccanegra); Teatro alla Scala (Elektra); San Francisco Opera (Elektra, Le nozze di Figaro); Bavarian State Opera in Munich (La traviata); Paris Opera (Die Zauberflöte); Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona (Die Zauberflöte, Cavalleria rusticana/Pagliacci); Lyric Opera of Chicago (Le nozze di Figaro, Madama Butterfly); and the Zurich Opera House (Le nozze di Figaro).