Biography
Daniele Squeo has been General Music Director at the Pfalztheater Kaiserslautern since the 2020/21 season. His repertoire is primarily centered on the Italian belcanto and Romantic operatic tradition as well as the German operatic and symphonic repertoire. Squeo is regarded as a distinguished specialist in the Italian opera repertoire of the 19th century, combining stylistic precision with a strong sense of dramatic expression. For his conducting of Richard Strauss’s Salome, he was nominated “Conductor of the Year” in 2021 by the international magazine Opernwelt.
Mr. Squeo is a multiple prize winner of international competitions including: 1st Prize at the XVIII Competition for Young Conductors in the European Union (Spoleto, Umbria), 1st Prize at the 5th German Operetta Competition, and prize winner of the 4th Competition for Conductors at Central German Universities with the MDR Symphony Orchestra (Leipzig, Germany). He is a 2012 recipient of the Dirigentenforum scholarship provided by the German Music Council.
Daniele Squeo began by studying piano and choral conducting in Italy. An invitation in 2008 brought him to Germany where he become assistant Kantor at the Nicolai Church in Leipzig. He subsequently enrolled at the University of Music “Franz Liszt” in Weimar and graduated with a Bachelor and Master of Music in orchestral conducting under the tutelage of Gunter Kahlert, Nicolás Pasquet, and Anthony Bramall.
Since 2009 Mr. Squeo has had the privilege of conducting such orchestras as the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, Vienna Symphonic Orchestra, Baden-Baden Philharmonie, Karlsruhe Badische Staatskapelle, Nürnberg Symphonic Orchestra, MDR Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra of the Musical Comedy Leipzig, Orchestra del Teatro Lirico Sperimentale di Spoleto, Bremen Philharmonic Orchestra, Essen Philharmonie, Basel Symphony Orchestra, Westfalen Neue Philharmonie, Jena Philharmonic Orchestra, Cottbus Philharmonic Orchestra, Pfalzphilharmonie Kaiserslautern Orchestra, Musikkollegium Winterthur, Vorarlberg Symphony Orchestra, Bochum Symphonic Orchestra, Mecklenburg Staatskapelle Schwerin, Deutsche Oper Berlin Orchestra, Orquestra Sinfonica de Bilbao, Philharmonia Zürich, Gewandhaus Orchestra, Staatskapelle Dresden Orchestra.
In the 2013/14 season, Daniele Squeo joined the Theater Nordhausen as Studienleiter and Kapellmeister. In 2014, he moved to the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe as Second Kapellmeister and appeared as a guest with Mozart’s The Magic Flute at the Daegu International Opera Festival in Korea. In the 2016/17 season, Squeo was appointed First Coordinated Kapellmeister in Karlsruhe, where he conducted new productions including L’elisir d’amore, I Capuleti e i Montecchi, Roméo et Juliette, Faust, Anna Bolena, Das kleine Schwarze / The Riot of Spring, Roberto Devereux and Carmina Burana.
He also conducted numerous repertoire productions such as The Magic Flute, La Bohème, Giselle, The Sleeping Beauty, Iphigénie en Tauride, Fantasio, Le Prophète, Carmen, Tosca, La Traviata, Un Ballo in Maschera, Macbeth, Simon Boccanegra, Adriana Lecouvreur, Turandot, Der Freischütz, Götterdämmerung and Pelléas et Mélisande, in addition to symphonic, special and youth concerts.
In 2017, Daniele Squeo conducted a new production of Rossini’s La Cenerentola at Theater Basel. In 2018, he conducted Il barbiere di Siviglia at the Bregenz Festival in a production directed by Brigitte Fassbaender. His collaboration with the Musikkollegium Winterthur, which began in 2016 with Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty, continued in 2019 with a new production of Swan Lake and several symphonic concerts. In the same year, Squeo made his debut in Moscow with Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia at the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall together with the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, and also conducted the new production of Rigoletto at the Bregenz Festival.
Further guest engagements brought Daniele Squeo to the Zurich Opera House in 2022 with Anna Bolena, returning in 2023 for Il turco in Italia and Macbeth. In 2024, he conducted Anna Bolena at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, and in 2023 Il barbiere di Siviglia at the Semperoper Dresden, as well as a new production of Tosca at the Royal Danish Theatre in Copenhagen in a staging by Kasper Holten.
His current and upcoming engagements include La Bohème and Don Giovanni at the Pfalztheater Kaiserslautern, Il cappello di paglia di Firenze at the Semperoper Dresden, the revival of Lucia di Lammermoor and a series of performances of Macbeth at the Hamburg State Opera, Turandot at the Opéra Royal de Wallonie–Liège, as well as Der Rosenkavalier and Aida at the Pfalztheater Kaiserslautern.