Conductor Michael Rossi is quickly becoming recognized as a star in the next generation of opera conductors. Mr. Rossi recently graduated from Washington National Opera’s Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program, having been selected for the Program by world-renowned tenor Plácido Domingo.

Mr. Rossi made his Washington National Opera main stage debut on May 6 conducting the Young Artist Performance of Le Nozze di Figaro.  Joe Banno of The Washington Post said that ”Perhaps the most memorable work Thursday evening, however, was Young Artist conductor Michael Rossi’s lovingly sculpted phrasing of Mozart’s astonishing orchestration.”

Mr. Rossi made his Carnegie Hall debut last April conducting the premiere of the opera Oh My Son by Marcos Galvany.

During the 2008-09 season he made his international debut conducting Plácido Domingo and the Chinese National Opera Orchestra in Beijing in a live television broadcast. Of Mr. Rossi’s performance, Maestro Domingo said “I felt confident when Michael conducted the orchestra when I sang in Beijing. His beat is clear, and he is musical and flexible.”

He then went on to make his Strathmore Hall conducting debut sharing the podium with Plácido Domingo with the Washington National Opera Orchestra in a concert of opera arias. He also led the WNO Orchestra for the first NEA Opera Honors, which was broadcast live on NPR.

During the spring of 2009, Mr. Rossi was the Music Director for the WNO World Premiere of Let Freedom Sing by Bruce Adolphe for which he received critical nod in The Washington Post citing his contribution as “uniformly solid.”

Other projects with WNO have included being assistant conductor for last year’s production of La Traviata and the Look-in performance of Carmen. He has also conducted at a number of venues in Washington, DC such as the French Embassy for a concert titled The Unknown Bizet, the Mexican Embassy for Zarzuela with Plácido Domingo and the Renwick Gallery for a programof scenes from American opera.

In 2006, Michael was named Music Director for the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra’s Millennium Stage Concert Series. Since then he has conducted the KCOHO Orchestra with concerts of Strauss’ Metamorphosen, Puccini’s I Crisantemi, Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat, Copland’s Appalachian Spring and Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht.

Mr. Rossi was awarded a fellowship to the American Academy of Conducting at Aspen in 2009 where he studied with its Music Director, David Zinman as well as Asher Fisch, Christopher Seaman, and George Manahan. He was also selected by Kurt Masur to participate in the Kurt Masur Conducting Seminar at the Manhattan School of Music and was one of the conductors chosen by Maestro Masur to conduct the concert of Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony with the Manhattan School of Music Symphony.

Mr. Rossi is following the path of many conductors who began their careers first as instrumentalists. At the age of 22, he took the seat of 2nd Trumpet in the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, the youngest instrumentalist to ever win a position in the orchestra. Before joining the KCOHO, he performed frequently with the New York Philharmonic and New World Symphony. Michael is also a gifted piano soloist and has been an organist for many churches throughout the New York and Washington, DC areas.