Gianluigi Gelmetti, the celebrated Italian conductor who was Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra from 2004 to 2008, has died in Monte Carlo at the age of 75.

Gianluigi Gelmetti. Image supplied.

Born in Rome in 1945 to a pianist father and a poet mother, Gelmetti studied at the famous Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. It was there, at the age of 16, that Sergiu Celibidache saw something in the young Gelmetti and let him conduct an orchestral rehearsal. That informal audition must have gone well, because Celibidache became his teacher soon after.

Gelmetti went on to make debuts with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, and from 1989 to 1998 he was the Principal Conductor of the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra as well as the Schwetzingen Festival.

Gelmetti is best known for his time as Musical and Artistic Director of the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, from 2000 to 2009, where he championed lesser-known and forgotten works including the world premieres of Marie Victoire by Ottorino Respighi (written in 1914 but never performed) and Marilyn (1980) by Lorenzo Ferrero; La fiamma (1933) by Respighi; Sakùntala (1921)...