Riccardo Frizza is Musical Director and Artistic Director of the Bergamo Donizetti Opera Festival and Chief Conductor of the Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Choir.

A native of Brescia, he trained at the Conservatory of Milan and at the Accademia Chigiana di Siena, and is one of the leading conductors of his generation. He works on a regular basis with the most important theatres worldwide.

He is in great demand as a conductor of opera, but also devotes himself with passion, as can be seen from his busy schedule, to the symphonic repertoire, which has taken him to the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Gewandhaus Leipzig, Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, London Philharmonia Orchestra, Tonkünstler Orchestra, Euskadiko Orchestra, Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Haydn and Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra.
Since March 2022, he has been Chief Conductor of the Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Choir, whose repertoire he is enriching with masterpieces by Richard Strauss and Mahler, but also Italian orchestral works by Martucci and Respighi. He has created an intense partnership with these historic ensembles, in Budapest, on tour, and in recordings. Their first CD, released in spring 2024, consists of the Requiem and the Stabat mater by Elisabetta Brusa, one of the most innovative and eminent composers in the world.

Since 2017, Riccardo Frizza has been musical director of the Bergamo Donizetti Festival, where he conducted Il castello di Kenilworth in 2018, Lucrezia Borgia in 2019 for the first performance of the new critical edition of the score published by Ricordi and Fondazione Teatro Donizetti, Marin Faliero and Belisario in 2020, L’elisir d’amore in 2021, La Favorite in 2022, Il diluvio universale in 2023 and Roberto Devereux in 2024. His Donizetti repertoire also includes Lucia di Lammermoor, Linda di Chamounix, Maria Stuarda, La fille du régiment, Don Pasquale and Anna Bolena.
On 4 December 2024, he was also appointed the artistic director of the Donizetti Opera.

In recent seasons, he has conducted operas and concerts at the Lyric Opera of Chicago (Norma), Liceu, Barcelona (Rigoletto, Il Trovatore), Teatro la Fenice (Lucia di Lammermoor, Ernani, Aida), Müpa Budapest (I puritani, Aida), Parma Verdi Festival (Falstaff, Simon Boccanegra), Bilbao Opera (Lucia di Lammermoor, La clemenza di Tito), Dallas Opera (Falstaff), Teatro alla Scala (Il pirata), Opéra Bastille (I puritani), Opera di Roma (Anna Bolena, Rigoletto), Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia (Omaggio a Caruso), Maggio Musicale Fiorentino (Rigoletto, L’amico Fritz), Théâtre des Champs-Élysées (La Sonnambula), Teatro di San Carlo Il barbiere di Siviglia, Anna Bolena), Teatro Real, Madrid (La Cenerentola), Metropolitan Opera (Lucia di Lammermoor), Teatro Comunale di Bologna (La Traviata), Teatro Regio di Torino (I Vespri siciliani), Teatro Grande di Brescia (Madama Butterfly, Brescia version). In 2020, he devised the opera-concert-recording project The Three Queens created for Sondra Radvanovsky, performed at theatres in Chicago, Barcelona, Naples and Madrid.

Highlights of the current season include I puritani at the Dresdner Philharmonie (recorded on CD and vinyl), Un ballo in maschera at the Liceu, Barcelona, Le villi at the Teatro Regio di Torino, Maria Stuarda at the Teatro San Carlo, Naples, Attila at the Parma Verdi Festival, Werther at the Teatro Comunale Nouveau, Bologna, Maria Padilla in Seville and La Bohème at the Metropolitan Opera, and orchestral concerts in Madrid, Vienna, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and at the Festival della Valle d’Itria, where he returned to conduct Beethoven’s Symphony no. 9 after over twenty years since the start of his international career.

In June 2021 he won the Premio Ópera XXI for best musical director. The accolade, awarded by the Spanish association of theatres, festivals and permanent opera seasons of the same name, was assigned for the outstanding Lucia di Lammermoor staged at Bilbao Ópera in October 2019.

In November 2024, a jury of Spain’s leading music critics awarded him the “Amics del Liceu” prize for Best Musical Direction of the current season (Un ballo in maschera).

His range of recordings is impressive, above all in the field of opera. Since 2022, three CDs have been released with singers of the calibre of Sondra Radvanovsky (The Three Queens, Pentatone), Nadine Sierra (Made for opera, Deutsche Grammophon), Javier Camarena (Signor Gaetano, Pentatone) and Jessica Pratt (Delirio,‎ Tancredi Records). The DVD of Mascagni’s opera L’amico Fritz (Dynamic, 2023), with the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and Donizetti’s Il Diluvio Universale (Dynamic, 2024) also received critical acclaim.

On 2nd June 2024 he was appointed Cavaliere al merito della Repubblica Italiana by the Italian President, Mattarella.