History
Founded in 2012, il Pomo d’Oro soon established itself as an ensemble of outstanding quality in the field of historically informed performance. After 11 years, il Pomo d’Oro is looking back on a prolific concert presence worldwide, and an impressive list of 44 recordings, many of them award-winning – and more to be released in 2025.
The ensemble is particularly renowned for working with singers, be it for solo recitals, or entire operas, performed and recorded in some of the most prestigious theatres around the world.
Recent productions include Handel’s Theodora which introduced the new vocal ensemble ‘il Pomo d’Oro choir’ alongside a stellar cast. The concert recording won the BBC Music Magazine’s Choral Award in 2023. The recording of Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder with Joyce DiDonato is nominated for a Grammy in 2025.
The 2022/23 season also saw productions of Handel’s Ariodante and a sold-out run of Tolomeo, followed by Handel’s Berenice and Alcina in 2024 and Jephtha in 2025, all conducted by Francesco Corti.
In 2023/24, il Pomo d’Oro continued to tour the famous Eden project with world renowned mezzo-soprano and frequent collaborator Joyce DiDonato, and a new tour of rarely performed early music with countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński, entitled Beyond.
In the field of instrumental music, the ensemble focuses on projects with its chief conductor Maxim Emelyanychev, and Francesco Corti as principal guest conductor and harpsichord soloist.
Zefira Valova, the concert master of il Pomo d’Oro, also leads the orchestra and appears as a violin soloist.
In 2023, il Pomo d’Oro launched its biggest recording project: the complete recording of Mozart’s symphonies, conducted by Maxim Emelyanychev, in collaboration with the French label Aparté. The first two volumes are already released, each with an instrumental solo concerto as a bonus.
THE NAME
The name of the orchestra refers to the title of an opera by Antonio Cesti, composed for the wedding of Emperor Leopold I of Austria with Margarita Teresa of Spain in Vienna in 1666.
The opera was the final part of an imperial celebration of incredible multimedial splendour, starting with fireworks of 73.000 rockets and a horse-ballet of 300 horses.
With its twenty-four different stage sets and stunning special effects like collapsing towers, flying gods and sinking ships, “Il Pomo d’Oro” was probably the most excessive and expensive operatic production in the then young history of the genre.
PROJECTS
Il Pomo d’Oro is an official ambassador of El Sistema Greece, a humanitarian project to provide free musical education to children in Greek refugee camps – offering workshops, concerts, and raising funds with beneficiary concerts.
The ‘il Pomo d’Oro Academy‘ was launched online during the first wave of the Covid 19 pandemic, offering free music lessons to music students worldwide. The Academy is now collaborating with El Sistema Venezuela, offering online masterclasses in Baroque music interpretation in cooperation with the “Inocente Carreño Itinerant Conservatory” in Caracas to the Baroque music ensembles of the El Sistema movement. In 2024, ‘il Pomo d’Oro Academy‘ will offer masterclasses in Baroque music performance at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
In its future residence in Monte San Savino, Italy, the ‘il Pomo d’Oro Academy’ will host instrumental and vocal masterclasses, workshops and musical education for children.
