Claudio Abbado

Claudio Abbado, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (Italian pronunciation:; born June 26, 1933), is an Italian conductor. He has served as music director of the La Scala opera house in Milan, principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, principal guest conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, music director of the Vienna State Opera, and principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic orchestra from 1989 to 2002. He has been a Senator for life in the Senate of Italy since 2013. Born in Milan, Italy, Abbado is the son of the violinist and composer Michelangelo Abbado, who was his first piano teacher, and the brother of musician Marcello Abbado.

After studying piano, composition, and conducting at the Milan Conservatory, at age 16, in 1955 Claudio Abbado studied conducting with Hans Swarowsky at the Vienna Academy of Music. He also spent time at the Chigiana Academy at Siena. In 1958 he won the international Serge Koussevitsky Competition for conductors, at the Tanglewood Music Festival, which resulted in a number of operatic conducting engagements in Italy, and in 1963 he won the Dimitri Mitropoulos Prize for conductors, allowing him to work for five months with the New York Philharmonic. Abbado made his début at La Scala in his hometown of Milan in 1960 and served as its music director from 1968 to 1986, conducting not only the traditional Italian repertoire but also presenting a contemporary opera each year, as well as a concert series devoted to the works of Alban Berg and Modest Mussorgsky.

He was instrumental in increasing accessibility to the working-class. He also founded the Filarmonica della Scala in 1982, for the performance of orchestral repertoire in concert. He conducted the Vienna Philharmonic for the first time in 1965 in a concert at the Salzburg Festival, and became the principal conductor in 1971. He served as music director and conductor for the Vienna State Opera from 1986 to 1991, with notable productions such as Mussorgsky's original Boris Godunov and his seldom-heard Khovanshchina, Franz Schubert's Fierrabras, and Gioacchino Rossini's Il viaggio a Reims.

In 1965, he made his British debut at the Halle Orchestra, followed, in 1966, by his London Symphony Orchestra debut. He continued to conduct on a regular basis with the London Orchestra, until 1979. From 1979 to 1988 he became the principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, and from 1982 to 1986 he was principal guest conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. With both orchestras, Abbado made a number of recordings for Deutsche Grammophon.

After recovering from cancer, he formed the Lucerne Festival Orchestra in 2003 and their concerts have been highly acclaimed. He also serves as music director of the Orchestra Mozart of Bologna, Italy. In September 2007 he announced that he was cancelling all of his forthcoming conducting engagements for the "near future" on the advice of his physicians but two months later he resumed conducting concerts with an engagement in Bologna. In July 2011, aged 78, he declared himself to be in good health.

Abbado's son is the opera director Daniele Abbado. From his relationship with the violinist Viktoria Mullova, he is the father of her oldest child, Misha. His nephew, Roberto Abbado (the son of his brother Marcello, born 1926, who is a composer and pianist), is also a conductor.