Internationally-renowned Italian musician Jacopo Sipari di Pescasseroli will conduct today (November 27) a concert by the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra (QPO) at the Qatar National Convention Centre (QNCC).
The performance, sponsored by the Italian embassy as part of the Italian Week celebration in Doha, will also witness famous Italian soprano Silvana Froli singing some of the important Giacomo Puccini pieces.
“This is my first time in the Middle East and this experience for me is amazing because I never thought that I will find an incredible international orchestra like QPO, it can be considered as one of the best,” the maestro told Gulf Times after their rehearsal yesterday.
He said some of the pieces to be performed at the concert include Gioachino Rossini’s The Barber of Seville and Overture to La Cenerentola (Cinderella), Puccini’s Tosca and Madame Butterfly, Giuseppe Verdi’s Overture to Nabucco and Overture to La forza del destino, and Pietro Mascagni’s Prelude to Cavalleria rusticana.
Di Pescasseroli added that he considers Puccini as one of the most important Italian opera composers, who was “revolutionary in his life” for building a unique opera, which is “a mixture of love, passion and death and all kinds of human emotions.”
“It is too beautiful to hear and to lead this kind of music and the audience will feel like they’re part of it,” he stressed. “We also have this kind of Italian Verdi and Rossini music, very sparkling.”
He also described QPO “as the biggest treasure” that Qatar has, which possesses and performs with musical ingenuity. “They have an amazing sound, amazing colours, wonderful technique, big intelligent musicale, and it is an incredible pleasure,” di Pescasseroli noted. He said he told his friends in Italy that they need an extraordinary orchestra like QPO, a group comprising 27 nationalities.
“It is like incredible, a big pleasure for me, because it seems you are conducting the world,” the maestro added. “You can invite all the best conductors in the world and everybody can be just only happy to work with this orchestra.
Di Pescasseroli said he was invited by his close friend, Italian ambassador to Qatar Pasquale Salzano, to conduct the QPO concert for the Italian Week – an extraordinary event mixing Italian and Qatari traditions in Doha.
About Qatar, he said, “everything in the country is just amazing, the wonderful places and respectful people, as well as the perfect weather during this period, it is like spring in Italy.”
About the kind of music he conducts, di Pescasseroli pointed out that it can give people all kinds of signals, words, and speech since music has no boundaries.
“Thanks to this orchestra (QPO), your country can just bring its love for music and culture to all over the world,” he stressed. About QNCC, the maestro described it as “a wonderful and perfect place for functions,” where the audience can appreciate music in all its details and “hear all the colours of the orchestra.”
After the concert in Doha, di Pescasseroli said he will return to Belgrade for another performance and then to then Nicaragua for the Puccini Foundation project for young people. “Through music, we can offer a very big opportunity especially to children. Through music, they can express themselves and can believe in a better future,” he added.



A profile
Born in 1985, Jacopo Sipari di Pescasseroli studied piano, composition and singing and graduated at “A. Casella” Conservatory of L’Aquila.
He continued his training in Italy and abroad with M Mauro Cardi, Alessandro Sbordoni, Azio Corghi, Sandro Rancitelli, Cesare Scarton, Josè Maria Sciutto, Mirta Herrera, Maria Mosca, Aurelio Iacolenna and Maria Chiara Pavone.
He received many awards such as the “Young Italy” award by the CNEL, and the “Chimera d’Oro” International Art Prize for music innovation. In 2012, he was appointed “Honourary Citizen of Abruzzo” for his merits in music and culture.
Di Pescasseroli was the principal guest conductor of the Puccini Festival Foundation of Torre Del Lago. He was a conducting guest professor at The National Conservatory of Mexico City, an artistic director of The International Midsummer Festival of Italy (Tagliacozzo), and became the head Department of “Singing And Pop Music Class” at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory In Italy. He has been the guest conductor of the National Theatre Orchestra of Serbia, Puccini Philharmonic Orchestra, National Radio and TV Symphony Orchestra of Serbia, Istanbul State Symphony Orchestra, Symphony Orchestra of Zapopan (Mexico), National Symphony Orchestra of Radio and Television of Ukraine, National Symphony Orchestra of Mexico, Philharmonic Orchestra of Benevento, National Philharmonic Orchestra of Mongolian State and many others.