Lorenzo Passerini is making his debut at the HGO podium conducting Cinderella. The founder and artistic director of the Orchestra Antonio Vivaldi, he was named the chief conductor of Finland’s Jyväskylä Sinfonia in fall 2024. Elsewhere during the 2024-25 season, Maestro Passerini has engagements at Vienna State Opera, Gran Teatre del Liceu, Hamburg State Opera, Tiroler Festspiele Erl, Las Palmas Opera, Savonlinna Opera Festival, Philharmonie Essen, and Konzerthaus Dortmund. In summer 2024, he made his U.S. debut at the Cincinnati Opera Festival with La traviata. During the 2023-24 season he performed two gala concerts with soprano Pretty Yende and the Antwerp Symphony at Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, in addition to conducting Romeo and Juliet at the ABAO Bilbao Opera; Aida at Opera Australia; The Barber of Seville at Deutsche Oper Berlin and the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro; Lucia di Lammermoor at the Hamburg State Opera; The Pearl Fishers at Théâtre des Champs-Élysées; Norma at Teatro San Carlo; and Medea at Canadian Opera Company. During the 2022-23 season, Passerini conducted La bohème at the Théâtre du Capitole, the Cologne Opera, and Théâtre des Champs-Élysées; Rigoletto at Teatro San Carlo di Napoli; Norma at the Teatro Massimo di Palermo; Lucia di Lammermoor at the Opera Las Palmas; Tosca at the Savonlinna Opera Festival; and Carmina Burana at Warsaw’s Grand Theatre. A former trombonist, Passerini graduated with honors in trombone at the Conservatoire in Como in 2009. In 2014, he received a second-level academic diploma, with honors, from the Conservatoire in Aosta.