Long Island Concert Orchestra presents the World Premiere of Rossini Perduto on Thursday, May 22, 2025 at 7:30pm at The Theater at St. John, 150 E. 76th Street, NYC. Tickets are $50 and can be purchased online at https://liconcertorchestra.org/events/rossini-perduto, by phone at 877-444-4488, or in person at the door.

With music by award-winning New York composer David Winkler and an Italian libretto by renowned poet and author Luigi Ballerini, Rossini Perduto brings an innovative operatic experience to the stage, reimagining lost and forgotten fragments of Rossini’s musical legacy.

At its core, Rossini Perduto is an exploration of artistic identity, forgotten genius, and the fine line between myth and reality. Through a striking interplay of shadows, light, and cinematic projections, the opera delves into the mystery surrounding Rossini’s “lost” music, questioning whether true artistic genius can ever be erased—or if it lingers, waiting to be rediscovered.

The production is helmed by acclaimed director Stefanos Koroneos, known for his bold and innovative work with his New York-based opera company, Teatro Grattacielo. Leading the musical direction is Grammy-nominated conductor Enrico Fagone, a rising star in the international music scene.

“This production brings together extraordinary international talent, blending tradition with innovation to create a truly unique operatic experience.” — Cecilia Dupire, Executive Producer

Rossini Perduto is proudly supported by: NYU Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò, Italian Cultural Institute of New York, CLIP Portofino, Kairos Italy Theater, Fundación Ibañez Atkinson, New York State Council on the Arts with support of the Office of the Governor and the New York Legislature, Long Island Concert Orchestra, The Opera Foundation, and our partner Camerata Bardi Vocal Academy, along with generous support from numerous individuals.

Join us for a groundbreaking operatic event that fuses history and modernity in an unforgettable performance!

Featuring: Alessio Borraggine, Chisom (CJ) Maduakor, Clara Luz Iranzo, Daniel Bauman, Davide Piva, Eliam Ramos, Ema Mitrovic, Franco Oportus, Hasmik Asatryan, Hilary Baboukis, Hyunsoon Kim, Jongwon Choi, Lu Huang, Maia Gonzalez, Natasha Scheuble, Ricardo Fuentes, Sarah Goldrainer, Sam Rachmuth, Taylor Consiglio, Zachary Angus, Zhedong Ren

David Winkler (composer)

New York composer David Winkler has composed over 200 works for orchestras and ensembles worldwide. He has received a Martha Argerich Project Commission, Leonard Bernstein Composer Fellowship, and additional commissions from the Verbania Arts Center, i Musici di Parma, two symphonic commissions from the Suoni dal Golfo Music Festival in Lerici, the City of Guayaquil, Ecuador, the Fromm Foundation, Aspen Festival, New York Philharmonic Ensembles, a BMI Young Composer Award and a special ASCAP award, etc, etc.​

New commissions/premieres include his “Omaggio al LVB” piano trio for the Parma Festival, Parma, Italy (October 26, 2020), “Homenaje a Guayaquil” in celebration of that Ecuadorian city’s 200th anniversary of independence and a new work for Pipe Organ and Orchestra for an August 2021 premiere at the Ocean Grove Music Festival (New Jersey), home of the USA’s largest pipe organ housed in the 5000 seat Ocean Grove Auditorium.

Commissions/premieres in 2019 included his 4th Symphony which was presented in August at the Suoni Dal Golfo Music Festival in Lerici, Italy (where he was composer in residence) and his “Lyric Preludes for Strings” which was premiered in February 2019 in Lugano, SW by I Musici di Parma under the direction of Enrico Fagone.​

David Winkler has been composer in residence with the Vahktang Jordania International Conducting Competition, Aspen Music Festival, the Banff Centre, Opera/Omaha, the Chautauqua Opera and the Lincoln Center Institute. Previous commissioned premieres include Rhapsodies for Violin and Orchestra premiering on July 4, 2018 at the US Embassy in Ecuador, Toccata for Piano Winds (December 2018 in New York) and his 2nd Violin Concerto, as part of a recording project with the Orlando Symphony in Florida.

Previous premieres in 2016 and 2017 included his Concert Prelude No. 3 by the Karoly Vary Symphony, Prague, Czech Republic, String Quartet No. 4 by the Amernet String Quartet, and recently the Piano Quintet for the Martha Argerich Project/Lugano Festival and the orchestral Concert Prelude No. 2 for the Philadelphia International Music Festival last July and the Symphonic Overture “Forza Vita” for the International Beethoven Festival-Chicago, Illinois:

Other recent premieres include those by The Paris Chamber Orchestra (Dubai, Sharzah, South Korea), The National Symphony of the Ukraine; The Symphony Un Cuyo, Mendoza, Argentina; National Symphony Orchestra of Bolivia, The Korean Broadcasting System, Chamber Orchestra Kremlin, Queen’s Chamber Band (NYC) , Houston Grand Opera, Kharkov Philharmonic (Ukraine) as well as commissions from The Alabama Symphony (Birmingham, AL), Long Island Mozart Festival (NY, USA), The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts National Symphony, and the Aspen Music Festival.

His works have been recorded on Naxos International including the “Concerto for Piano and Orchestra” and “Elements Concerti” and on Crystal Records, “Warhol Appassionata”. His theatrical works include the recent one-act opera, “Pullman Car Hiawatha” based on the play by Thornton Wilder and a new ballet, “The Little Prince Ballet” based on the famous book by Antoine de St. Exupery.

He has also received a fellowship grant by the New York Foundation for the Arts (2001)to support the creation of a variety of new symphonic works; and a commission grant by the New York State Council on the Arts for choral music.

David Winkler has served as the Executive and Artistic Director of Chamber Players International (chamberplayersinternational.org) since 1998 and also currently serves as Executive Director of the Long Island Concert Orchestra (liconcertorchestra.org). He is also noted in IMDb for his film score for the award winning dramatic short “The Waltz,” directed by Trevor Zhou. And has also collaborated with world renowned photographer Robert Dutesco by scoring the original music to Mr. Dutesco’s film/video “Universality”.

Luigi Ballerini (librettist)

Born in Milan two months before Italy entered the Second World War, Luigi Ballerini reluctantly recalls the first five years of his life , and especially the nights spent in the basement of Via Neera 10, at the end of Porta Ticinese, which served as an air raid shelter. These are, he maintains, years not lived , and must therefore be subtracted from the eighty he has now reached.

An avid explorer of the streets of the Milanese suburbs and the adjacent agricultural background, he grew up in false joy and ill-concealed anguish. Son, nephew and cousin of tailors, he admits to having always enjoyed a certain elegance in his clothing. On the other hand, the overcrowding of the house and the consequent lack of privacy made him an enemy of sleep. Like many of his peers born and raised in the extreme outskirts of a large city, street life proved to be much more attractive to him than domestic life . The precarious economic conditions of his family forced him to abandon his studies early, so, after middle school, he became one of the many “goliardi delle serali” as his beloved Elio Pagliarani would have called them in one of his youthful poems.

The bond with Milan and especially with its neighborhood remains very strong , so much so that after having lived most of his adult life in the United States, where he taught modern and contemporary Italian literature at various universities (City University of New York, New York University, University of California Los Angeles, Yale), since 2004 he has returned to live in Milan, not far from the Navigli, for half the year.

A specialist in psychological tricks, he has tried for many years to blunt the effects of a fundamental absence: that of his father, who fell in combat against the Germans – or perhaps was shot by them – on the island of Cephalonia in September 1943. Kept under control with makeshift means, such as incomprehensible outbursts of anger and long periods of black humor, the trauma finally exploded in 2005 (at last: he was now sixty-five years old!), thanks to the writing of the poem Cefalonia in which, by reducing to zero the rationalizations dispensed with punctual self-assurance by the hypnotists of consciences – incapable of grasping the historical, testimonial, regenerative meaning that lies in the materiality of events –, he authorizes the words of the drama to clash , to bewitch each other , to attract each other , to rub against each other , stimulated by a strong emotion and a non-spurious thirst for truth. To the pseudo-catharsis into which the dangerous superficiality of the guardians of rules trapped by habit inevitably stumbles, his writing opposes the modest proposal of a poetic discourse in which naming and reporting are experienced not as symbolic certifications of reality, but as occasions , as dives, as long and reasoned (and unruly) dives into the sea of ​​the unconscious perhaps, but not of the unconsciousness.

After Cefalonia his life as a poet has become somewhat complicated. For many years he has been searching for an enlightenment that would allow him to write down an oratory in which voices of different extractions (ancient, modern and contemporary) question themselves on the role of human work in contemporary society, this seeming to him the most urgent theme together with the intimately related one of the distribution of goods and knowledge.

Throughout these years of feverish waiting, he continued his work as a translator , essayist , curator of cultural events (such as the biennial meetings of Latte e Linguaggio ) and of editorial series (such as the Lorenzo da Ponte Italian Library of the University of Toronto Press).

Many of his traveling companions have passed, as his painter friend Angelo Savelli used to say, to the fourth dimension. He deeply misses them and tries, without forgetting the living, to keep their memory alive with essays, dedications and interventions . To continually question himself he finds no better stimulus than the company of a group of young people to whom, in the past, he taught some rudiments of the art of reading.

Stefanos Koroneos (director)

Stefanos was born in the beautiful city of Athens but grew up between 2 small towns in southern Greece. He describes his childhood as a world full of photographic memories: postcards of places, faces, and buildings. At age of 20, Stefanos moved to Italy to study architecture. He soon discovered his other great passion: opera.

From that moment on, his life entered a total immersion in theater and classical music, first as a student, then as a performer and now as a director

Stefanos has stood out in his career as a baritone for more than 25 years, performing a wide repertoire, both old and new, and which has led him to perform on large opera and concert stages around the world.

As a singer Stefanos has been seen at the Rossini Festival in Pesaro, the Theaters of Parma, Pisa, Livorno, Trento, Bolzano and Bussetto Verdi Festival as well as the Greek National Opera, the Easter Festival in Rome, the Bolshoi Opera, Seoul Opera, Oslo Opera Den Nye, Staatstheater Freiburg, Theater Osnabrûck, New York City Opera, the Opera Orchestra of New York, Palm Beach Opera, Tampa Opera and Connecticut Opera.

Stefanos always had a very strong interest in directing. In 2016, his first opportunity to direct a full opera appears when he directed Cimarosa’s Il Matrimonio Segreto for the Altamura Center of the Arts, upstate New York. Right then and there he knew that he would want to pursue this new vocation in a more significant way.

As Stefanos opens a new chapter as General and Artistic Director of Teatro Grattacielo, he brings with him the experience of having worked with some of opera’s most distinguished stage directors and conductors, including Franco Zeffirelli, Fabrizio Melano, Moisés Kaufman, and Richard Bonynge.

In 2021 he directed Mozart’s Idomeneo in Heraklion, Greece and with Teatro Grattacielo in New York, followed by Mascagni’s L’amico Fritz for the Phoenicia Festival of the Voice. In 2022 he will be directing Don Giovanni at the Apollon Theater in Syros, Greece and Zandonai’s Giulietta e Romeo with Teatro Grattacielo in NYC.

Enrico Fagone (conductor)

Dynamic, versatile, and charismatic, Enrico Fagone has been hailed as a magnetic presence on stage. Critics have noted his “ability to elicit from the orchestra a precise and cohesive sound—compact, powerful, and intimate” (MusiCultura), as well as bring “real narrative awareness to the podium, enhancing the choreographic elements of the score without falling into easy absorption of the musical language” (L’Ape Musicale).

Currently Music and Artistic Director of the Long Island Concert Orchestra in New York, Fagone has conducted world-renowned ensembles such as the London Symphony Orchestra, RAI National Symphony Orchestra of Turin, Milan Symphony Orchestra, Sicilian Symphony Orchestra, Marche Philharmonic Orchestra, Hungarian State Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra of Padua and Veneto, Italian Virtuosi, Mendelssohn Chamber Orchestra, Savaria Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra of the Serbian National Theatre, Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana, and FOI Opera Orchestra Italiana. He has also performed in prestigious venues and festivals like Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa, Belcanto Opera Festival Bad Wildbad, Teatro Petruzzelli (Bari), Royal Opera Festival of Krakow, and Teatro Regio di Parma.

Fagone conducted Mozart’s Così fan tutte at the Kammeroper in Munich and was invited to lead the gala concert Fuoco di Gioia at the Verdi Festival in Parma, sharing the stage with revered singers Michele Pertusi and Vladimir Stoyanov. In 2019, Fagone debuted with the RAI National Symphony Orchestra in a broadcast concert featuring celebrated pianist and frequent collaborator, Martha Argerich.

A double bass graduate and virtuoso performer, Fagone pursued orchestral conducting studies at Milan’s “Claudio Abbado” Civic School and specialized in operatic repertoire with Daniele Agiman at the Parma Academy. His training was further enriched under the legendary Jorma Panula in Helsinki and with Alim Shakh and Semyon Bychkov, students of the great Russian maestro Ilya Musin. He currently teaches at Juilliard and the Manhattan School of Music.

Fagone has collaborated closely with contemporary artists and feels drawn to classical and early Romantic repertoire, including works by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms. He is also passionate about revisiting lesser-known classical composers from the past, such as Muzio Clementi, Giuseppe Martucci, Aldo Finzi and Giovanni Bottesini, whose deep connection is reflected in his role as Artistic Director of the Bottesini Competition.

His discography as a double bass performer includes recordings for EMI, Deutsche Grammophon, Warner, Stradivarius, and Da Vinci. Most recently, he conducted the London Symphony Orchestra on the album Aspire(Musica Solis), featuring clarinettist Seunghee Lee and composer and bandoneonist JP Jofre. This disc earned a Grammy nomination.

About Long Island Concert Orchestra

Long Island Concert Orchestra (LICO), with Enrico Fagone artistic director, was established in September of 2016 by David Winkler Executive Director of its umbrella not-for-profit, Sea Cliff Chamber Players. The new orchestra’s continuing mission has been to meet the growing needs on Long Island and metropolitan New York City for a fully professional orchestra possessing a unique approach to repertoire, presentation and international reach.

Long Island Concert Orchestra (LICO)’s long term mission is to bring great orchestral music into the very communities where our audiences reside – throughout Long Island and metropolitan New York. To best reach the broadest possible range of audiences, the orchestra performs at a variety of venues throughout the region including Nassau and Suffolk Counties as well as New York City. LICO also provides a variety of vital and dynamic music education programs in our public schools as well free parks programs for large audiences.

On Long Island, LICO helps to meet the cultural needs of its three million residents with fully professional orchestra programs throughout the region. These programs include free parks concerts, in-school Arts-In- Education programs and other vital endeavors. In the just last several years LICO has established concert series in a variety of regional venues including the Tilles Center for the Performing Arts, the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center, Morgan Park, the Patchogue Theater, the Suffolk Theater, East Islip Summer Series, Huntington Arts Summer Stage, and Krasnoff Hall along with New York City venues such as Merkin Hall and the famous landmark venues Good Shepherd Church, and Broadway Presbyterian at 114th Street, Manhattan.

Our Music Director, grammy nominated Enrico Fagone, is well known to the international music community leading major orchestras throughout the world. Maestro Fagone continues to create unique and powerful programs with LICO bringing internationally renowned concert soloists to LICO concerts both throughout Long Island and in our metropolitan New York events as well.

In addition to the above public concert events, LICO has already provided programs for young people including numerous student coaching and performance services in area public schools including activities at the Uniondale, Wheatley, Sewanhaka and Sachem School Districts, encompassing some 14 lower, middle and high schools.

For more information, visit liconcertorchestra.org.

#