John Massaro is the Principal Conductor for the Phoenix Opera where, in addition to leading productions of fully staged operas, he also conducted opera Galas with world renowned opera superstars Dmitri Hvorostovsky and Jonas Kaufmann. He most recently made his Italian conducting debut with a series of performances of Rossini’s La Cenerentola for FIO Italia. He returns this summer to conduct Dialogues of the Carmelites. He made his Carnegie Hall debut conducting the Mozart Requiem which led to a distinguished European tour to Budapest, Krakow, Prague, Salzburg and Vienna, where he conducted several additional Mozart masterpieces in a 250th anniversary celebration of the composer’s birth.

Maestro Massaro served as an assistant to Leonard Bernstein during the creation of A Quiet Place and to Zubin Mehta for the Israel Philharmonic’s production of Madama Butterfly in Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem. He worked extensively with the great German soprano, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, with whom he coached both Opera and Art Song repertoire.

Maestro Massaro is also an award winning composer recently completing his second opera called The Seven Sisters intended for university opera programs. Samples of his first opera, Isabella, are available on the website IsabellaOpera.com.