Francesco Filidei is one of the most prominent contemporary Italian composers on the international scene, continuing the avantgarde tradition in his own individual style. Filidei was born in Pisa in 1973 and began his musical studies in Florence, unusually for a composer, as an organist – though he soon added courses in Composition. After graduating in both subjects, he continued his studies in Paris at the Conservatoire National Supérieur and at the institute for electronic music IRCAM. Filidei was also significantly influenced by lessons with Salvatore Sciarrino and, as an organist, with Jean Guillou.
Alongside a career as a concert organist specialising in new music, from the mid-Noughties onwards Filidei made an increasing number of public appearances to perform his own works, received commissions as a composer and funding from institutions including the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation. Starting with works for the organ and piano, Filidei gradually began to write for other instruments and, at a very early stage, for orchestra. Evidence of Filidei’s talent for provocation and sense of humour was clear from pieces such as Killing Bach (2015), which makes acoustic use of a pistol a short way in. Following the opera Giordano Bruno in 2018, he has increasingly written ambitious, large-scale works, including a requiem and the oratorio The Red Death after Edgar Allan Poe, which received its world premiere as a collaboration between IRCAM and the SWR Symphony Orchestra to mark the centenary celebrations of the festival in Donaueschingen. The premiere of his third opera Il nome della rosa, based on the novel by Umberto Eco, is scheduled for production by the Teatro alla Scala, Milan, and the Opéra de Paris in April 2025.
As of June 2023.