Top Songs By Valentina Peleggi
About Valentina Peleggi
Artist Biography
Valentina Peleggi is a pioneering figure, one of few Italian female conductors, and the first Italian woman to enter the Royal Academy of Music conducting program. The music director of the Richmond Symphony Orchestra in Virginia, Peleggi has been active in the U.S. and Brazil in addition to Britain and continental Europe.
Peleggi was born in Florence, Italy, on January 1, 1983. She attended the Chigiana Music Academy, earning three of the school's top honors upon graduation, and also earned a piano degree from the School of Music of Fiesole. In 2005, she became the principal conductor and artistic director of the University Choir of Florence, remaining in that post until 2015. Her principal teachers in Italy were Piero Bellugi, Gianluigi Gelmetti, and Bruno Campanella, alongside whom she worked as an assistant conductor. Peleggi went on to the Royal Academy of Music, where she also earned a master's degree in comparative literature, writing a thesis on the relationship between music and poetry in the 1950s. She had further instruction from top conductors such as David Zinman (at the Tonhalle-Orchester in Zurich) and Daniele Gatti (at the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam), as well as Marin Alsop, with whom she worked as the recipient of the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship in 2015. Peleggi began her professional career as the assistant conductor of the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra, advancing two years later to the position of conductor-in-residence of the orchestra and principal conductor of its Symphonic Choir. She remained with the orchestra until 2019, moving on to a position as a guest music director of the Teatro d São Pedro Opera the following year.
Meanwhile, Peleggi was finding top-level symphonic engagements as a guest conductor. She has appeared with the BBC Scottish Symphony (where she led the world premiere of a new work by Roxanna Panufnik on texts by Alma Mahler), the Residentie Orkest in The Hague, and the Gulbenkian Orchestra of Lisbon. In 2020, she became the principal conductor of the Richmond Symphony in the U.S. state of Virginia. In 2021, Peleggi made her recording debut, leading the Coro Sinfónico do Estado de São Paulo in a recording of choral transcriptions of music by Heitor Villa-Lobos. ~ James Manheim
Hometown
Florence, Italy
Genre
Classical