Best known as an opera conductor, Antonio Pappano expanded his activities into orchestral music in the late '90s. Since 2002, he has been the music director of London's Royal Opera at Covent Garden.

Pappano was born to Italian immigrant parents in Epping, Essex, U.K., on December 30, 1959. His father was a chef who was a tenor singer and a voice teacher on the side. Pappano started piano lessons at age six. After several years, he resolved to make the piano a career. When Pappano was 13, his family moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut, so that his father could take a full-time music teaching job. Pappano took piano lessons with Norma Verrilli and held a variety of jobs that included being a pianist in a cocktail bar. Later, he studied composition with Arnold Franchetti and conducting with Gustav Meier, but at the time, he had no ambition to become a conductor. He became a rehearsal pianist at the New York City Opera and then at the Frankfurt Opera. "The traditional route for conductors is via the piano, working with singers in the opera house. That's how it worked for me," he told the London Independent. Pappano also did rehearsal work with the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and there, he attracted the attention of conductor Daniel Barenboim. Barenboim hired Pappano as an assistant, and in 1987, Pappano made his debut at the Norwegian Opera. By 1990, he was the music director there, and in 1992, he was named to the same position at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels. He made his recording debut there in 1996, conducting a performance of Mendelssohn's Elijah with the Orchestre Symphonique et Choeurs du Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie.

In 1993, Pappano caught a major break when he subbed for an ailing Christoph von Dohnányi, leading a new Vienna State Opera production of Wagner's Siegfried. Guest conducting appearances at houses in Britain and around Europe followed. Late in the decade, he added orchestral appearances to his résumé, serving from 1997 to 1999 as a guest conductor of the Israel Philharmonic and appearing with the Chicago Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, among many other orchestras. In 2002, Pappano was named the music director of the Royal Opera Covent Garden, a position he held through 2024; Jakub Hrůša was designated his successor, taking up the baton in 2025. In 2005, Pappano also became the music director of the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, continuing to hold that position through the early 2020s. Pappano has a substantial catalog of well over 80 albums, predominantly, but not exclusively, devoted to opera. Pappano has recorded many of the core works of the Italian opera repertory for the EMI Classics label. He also conducts German and French opera enthusiastically, as well as a variety of instrumental music that has included a set of Leonard Bernstein's three symphonies with the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in 2018. In 2020, Pappano conducted a new recording of Verdi's opera Otello, starring Jonas Kaufmann in the title role and, once again, featuring the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. He and that orchestra moved to Warner Classics in 2022 for a recording of Rossini's Messa di Gloria, returning the following year with Puccini's Turandot with Kaufmann in a lead role. ~ James Manheim

The Soviet-born violinist Maxim Vengerov has been one of the most successful modern exponents of the great Russian school, marrying flawless technique acquired early in life to broad musical curiosity. He has been increasingly often active as a conductor.

Vengerov was born August 20, 1974, in Novosibirsk, in Siberia, where his father was an oboist in the local symphony orchestra. His mother ran an orphanage and conducted its choir. Vengerov took up the violin at four and, of his own volition, would practice for hours after dinner. The child was enrolled in lessons with a strict local teacher with whom he clashed; he refused to play, but then when his mother broke down in tears, he suddenly picked up his violin and played 17 pieces from memory without interruption. At seven, the Soviet government moved Vengerov to Moscow for special musical studies. His teacher was Zakhar Bron, whose tuition led the youngster to a win at the 1984 Junior Wieniawski Competition in Poland. Vengerov followed Bron to London and then to Lübeck, Germany. In his teens Vengerov was already playing concertos with top European orchestras such as the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam; he made his U.S. debut with the New York Philharmonic in 1991.

Vengerov's recording career began in the late 1980s, and in 1992 he signed with the Teldec label. A major breakthrough was a 1994 recording of violin concertos by Shostakovich and Prokofiev, with Mstislav Rostropovich conducting the London Symphony Orchestra; it won two Gramophone awards in Britain and snared two Grammy nominations in the U.S. In 1997, Vengerov was named Envoy for Music of the United Nations' Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF), the first classical musician to hold the post. He signed with the EMI label in 2000, and for Teldec or EMI he has recorded almost all the major violin concertos. Unlike many other violinists from the former Eastern Bloc, Vengerov cultivates a wide variety of musical interests that include Baroque works, jazz, and rock.

His pace of recordings and performances on the violin was slowed somewhat by a shoulder injury sustained in a 2005 weightlifting accident, but he used the layoff to develop his interest and skills in conducting. In 2010, he became chief conductor of the Menuhin Festival Gstaad Orchestra, and he completed several courses in orchestral and operatic conducting. Vengerov has also taught violin at the Menuhin Institute in Switzerland and the Royal College of Music in London. In 2019, as a violinist, he released an album of works by Kreisler and Chinese composer Chen Qigang with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. An Israeli citizen, Vengerov lives with his family in Monaco. He owns the "ex-Kreutzer" Stradivarius violin, which he plays with a bow once owned by Jascha Heifetz. ~ James Manheim