The Orchestra of the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma was founded in 1880 together with the Teatro Costanzi. It has performed the premieres of Cavalleria rusticana, L’amico Fritz, Iris and Tosca and in the first years of the last century the orchestra included musicians such as Pietro Mascagni, Igor Stravinsky and Riccardo Zandonai.
In 1928, with the transformation of the Teatro Costanzi into the Teatro Reale dell’Opera di Roma, the Orchestra received an extraordinary qualitative boost with the appearance of conductors including Gino Marinuzzi, Tullio Serafin and Gabriele Santini. Other works the orchestra has performed include the unforgettable Italian premiere of Wozzeck by Alban Berg in 1942, conducted by Tullio Serafin.
In more recent times, the role of Conductor has been held by Bruno Bartoletti and Gianluigi Gelmetti. Other conductors who have collaborated with the Orchestra of the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma over the years include Arturo Toscanini, Victor de Sabata, Gianandrea Gavazzeni, Herbert von Karajan, Carlo Maria Giulini, Zubin Mehta, Leonard Bernstein, Georges Prêtre, Georg Solti, Thomas Schippers, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Jeffrey Tate and, more recently, Riccardo Muti.