Pietro Rizzo was born in Rome in 1973, and began his musical studies with the violin, receiving his diploma from the Conservatorio Nazionale S. Cecilia in his hometown in 1992; he continued his studies at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, Italy, from 1990 to 1993, where he was awarded the Diploma of Merit in 1992 and 1993. In 1993 he received a full scholarship to study at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, USA, where he graduated with a Master's of Music in Violin Performance in 1996 and an Artist Certificate in 1997. In 1997 he was accepted into the prestigious conducting class at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland, where he studied with Jorma Panula and Leif Segerstam, graduating with a Master's of Music in Orchestral Conducting in 2000.

Since 2000 he has been working as guest conductor at the Finnish National Opera in Helsinki, as well as several orchestras al major opera companies in Finland. He has also guested at the Rimsky-Korsakov State Opera Theatre in S.Petersburg, Russia, the Volksoper Wien, the Staatstheater Braunschweig in Germany, the Stadttheater Bern in Switzerland. He has been invited to several festivals such as the Rossini Opera Festival 2002, the Savonlinna Opera Festival 2005 in Finland, the Dalhalla Opera Festival 2005 in Sweden,the Turku Music Festival 2005 in Finland, and in 2006 he inaugurated the Todi Arte Festival in Italy.

He has been conducted the Lithuanian National Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestra Sinfonica Giuseppe Verdi di Milano, the Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna, the Flemish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Bergische Symphoniker and Essener Philharmoniker in Germany, the Tampere Philharmonic in Finland. Pietro Rizzo has also been working regulary with youth orchestras, since 2003 with the Orquesta Joven de la Sinfonica de Galicia, since 2006 with the Swedish National Orchestra Academy, and since 2003 he is guest professor at the Operastudio of the Flemish Opera in Gent, Belgium.

Since 2003 he is Erste Kapellmeister (first conductor) at the Aalto Theater Essen, where he conducts about seventy performances of opera and ballet per season. His actual repertory includes more than thirty operas: Norma, I Puritani, Anna Bolena, Lucia di Lammermoor, La Traviata, Rigoletto, Il Trovatore, Un Ballo in Maschera, Don Carlos, Otello, Falstaff, Luisa Miller, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, La Cenerentola, Il Viaggio a Reims, Il Turco in Italia, La Boheme, Madama Butterfly, Tosca, La Fanciulla del West, Salome, der Rosenkavalier, Carmen, die Lustige Witwe, Orphee aux Enfers, a Midsummer Night's Dream, the Rape of Lucretia, Le Nozze di Figaro, Cosi' Fan Tutte, die Zauberflöte, Hänsel und Gretel, the Medium.

In August 2006 he took up the post of Chief Conductor at the Göteborg Opera in Sweden, where in his first season he will conduct Falstaff and a new production of La Traviata. In the 2006-2007 he has also conducted Il Viaggio a Reims at the Finnish National Opera, and made his successful debut at the Deutsche Oper Berlin with Cavalleria Rusticana/Pagliacci. In Aalto Theater Essen he will be conducting the new production of L'Italiana in Algeri, as well as performances of Tosca, La Forza del Destino, Don Giovanni, among others.

In the 2007-2008 he will be conducting the new productions of Faust and Eugen Onegin in Göteborg, as well as Il Viaggio a Reims at the Israeli Opera in Tel Aviv, La Boheme at the Finnish National Opera; he has been reinvited to the Deutsche Oper Berlin to conduct Nabucco in February 2008. In 2009 he will make his debut at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York with Cavalleria Rusticana/Pagliacci

Update February 2007

Mo. Pietro Rizzo is represented by Mr.Uri Zur