Renato Balsadonna

“Balsadonna, a conductor with notable choral as well as instrumental experience, was a kind of factotum of the performance. His direction not only marked entrances and tempi for the orchestra and the voices, but played the emotional and dramatic temperature of the work. Although the overture was already widely applauded, without a doubt perfect and clear in its conception, in its timing and its dynamics, the best thing about Balsadonna was its version of the last scene of the last act. Progressive, expansive and passionate intensification of the continuous melodies, infinite, Wagner would say, until reaching a unifying and total choral symphonic sonorous climax.”

– Ramón Avello, El Comercio 

“Of the two conductors, I prefereed Renato Balsadonna’s stylish unfolding of mid-period Verdi in the later performance to Giacomo Sagripanti’s nervy-to-neurotic gear-changes and explosive outbirsts: it was a joy to hear the chorus almost eating out of their former chorus director’s hands, and the orchestra responding to the idiomatic flexibility of his beat. It’s good to know that, finally, Balsadonna is getting his due at Covent Garden. In this repertoire he’s a few cuts above several of the routiniers who get annual gigs with the Royal Opera.”

– Hugh Canning, Opera Magazine (June 2022)

“In the pit, Renato Balsadonna had an intuitive understanding of the score, illuminating Verdi’s rich instrumental palette and coaxing from the Royal Opera House Orchestra detailed accompaniments, memorably so from an eloquent clarinet in ‘Dammi tu forza, o cielo’ and haunting brass for the finale’s slow march.  The two preludes were both shapely creations too.”

– David Truslove, operatoday.com

“[Daniel Oren] was replaced by the exellent Renato Balsadonna, the Royal Opera’s former chorus master, now a conductor thoroughly versed in Italian repertoire, and an entirely reliable pair of hands who managed to set niftier tempos than Oren had in December, while getting the orchestra to play with a precision (…) are all sturdy, if coarse, singers with ample, Covent-Garden-sized voices, but they are also generalized performers, lacking the alert italianità of the orchestral performance under Balsadonna.”

– Hugh Canning, Opera Magazine (March 2022)

“…the orchestra under the direction of conductor Renato Balsadonna was superb and proved that one could understand the story by listening to the music alone. ”

– Amanda Hodgson, northwestend.co.uk