Elisa Citterio

Elisa Citterio is well known as a historically oriented violinist in her homeland of Italy but has also played a modern violin in orchestral ensembles. In 2017, she was named the music director of the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra in Toronto, becoming only the second person to hold the post. Citterio was born in 1975 in Brescia, Italy. Her whole family was musical: her two sisters are also professional musicians, and her mother and brother are composers. In preschool, Citterio was already playing violin and piano, and by her teenage years, she was playing Baroque chamber music with her mother and sister. She enrolled at the Conservatorio di Musica "Luca Marenzio" in Brescia when she was 16, studying violin and viola, and earning full scholarships for her entire five-year program. After graduating, she went on for further lessons with Dora Schwarzberg, Matis Vaitsner, and Ilya Grubert, among others. Citterio became concertmaster of the La Scala Opera Academy Orchestra in Milan, receiving further training there in a wide variety of operatic, orchestral, and chamber music repertory. In 2000, she made her debut with that orchestra, performing Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante for violin, viola, and orchestra, K. 364. She continued to hone her Baroque violin technique, studying with Chiara Banchini, Luigi Mangiocavallo, and Enrico Onofri. In 2004, she joined the La Scala Opera Orchestra itself, also playing under conductor Riccardo Muti with the Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra. For the next decade, Citterio played on numerous recordings of Baroque, Classical-era, and Romantic repertory. She co-chaired the Baroque violin program of the Civica Scuola di Musica Claudio Abbado in Milan from 2014 to 2016. Citterio has appeared as a violinist with the Accademia Bizantina, La Venexiana, and other top Italian Baroque groups, and in 2017, she was selected as the new music director of Tafelmusik, replacing the group's only director up to that point, Jeanne Lamon, and settling in Toronto's Kensington Market neighborhood with her partner and daughter. In 2019, she released the album Vivaldi con amore, leading Tafelmusik and performing as a soloist. ~ James Manheim