Equally at home in the opera house and the concert hall, his vast repertoire ranges from fundamental works of the operatic and symphonic repertoire to rarities from Bellini, Cimarosa and Donizetti to Giordano, Pizzetti and Montemezzi. Combining deep expertise in the vocal art with theatrical flair and practical collaborative skills honed over decades of experience in the world’s best theatres, he is acclaimed by singers and audiences alike as a master of the operatic art.

In addition to a large repertoire of Italian operas, Rizzi has also conducted major works by Mozart, Wagner, Strauss, Britten, Mussorgsky, and Janáček.

Since 2019 Rizzi has been Music Director of Opera Rara, the UK-based company devoted to returning unknown and underappreciated works by celebrated and overlooked composers to the repertoire, and since 2015 he has been Conductor Laureate of the Welsh National Opera, following his tenure as Music Director (1992-2001 and 2004-2008) during which he was widely credited with overseeing a dramatic increase in the company’s artistic standards and international profile. He regularly conducts at the Teatro alla Scala, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden and the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Opera National de Paris, Teatro Real Madrid, Rossini Opera Festival of Pesaro, Netherlands Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, New National Theater Tokyo, Opernhaus Zürich, Deutsche Oper Berlin and Théâtre Royal de La Monnaie, Brussels.

Rizzi is also critically acclaimed as a symphony conductor with major orchestras around the world, including the Hallé, the London Philharmonic, the Filarmonica della Scala, the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, the Netherlands Philharmonic, the Orchestra i Pomeriggi Musicals, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, Bergen Philharmonic, Hungarian National Philharmonic, Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Orchester Philharmonique de Strasbourg, Orchester Symphonique de Montréal and the orchestra of the National Arts Centre, Ottawa.

In 2022/23 Rizzi inaugurated the season of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, for the third time in his career, with a new production of Cherubini’s Medea filmed on video and broadcast in cinemas in various countries. He also conducted a new staging of Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette at the Opera National de Paris. In the same season, with Opera Rara, he recorded Mercadante’s Il Proscritto which he rediscovered, which won the International Opera Awards as best complete opera.

Carlo Rizzi’s extensive discography includes complete recordings of Gounod’s Faust, Janáček's Katya Kabanova (in English) and Verdi’s Rigoletto and Un Ballo in Maschera, all with Welsh National Opera; a Deutsche Grammophon DVD and CD of Verdi’s La Traviata recorded live at the Salzburg Festival with Anna Netrebko, Rolando Villazon and the Vienna Philharmonic. He has also made recordings of symphonic works by Bizet, de Falla, Ravel, Respighi and Schubert with orchestras including the London and Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestras.

His studio recording of Donizetti’s L’Esule di Roma has just been released for Opera Rara in a new critical version, and the first two CDs of a complete edition of Donizetti’s chamber compositions, with Rizzi on piano, accompanying singers including Lawrence Brownlee, Michael Spyres and Ermonela Jaho will be released later in the year.

Rizzi also recently released a CD containing Puccini’s complete symphonic compositions and the world première recordings of two orchestral symphonic suites created by Rizzi from the operas Tosca and Madama Butterfly, with the Welsh National Opera orchestra.