Rani Calderon, born in Israel in 1972, is a conductor, composer, pianist, and, beginning in the current season (2023/24), the musical director of the Israel Sinfonietta Beer Sheva. He studied at the Academy of Music in Tel Aviv and in Jerusalem under Pnina Salzman, Mendi Rodan, Noam Sherrif, Evgeny Tsirlin, and Yitzhak Sadai. He went on to study opera in Europe with Bruno Ricci in Florence; was an assistant of Tullio Serafin, a student of Toscanini’s; and studied in Paris with Janine Reiss, who was the piano accompanist of Maria Callas, and more. He served as musical director of the Teatro Municipal de Santiago de Chile (2009-2021) and the Opéra national de Lorraine in France (2014-2018). As guest conductor he has conducted the symphonic repertoire from Haydn to contemporary music with the national orchestras of Belgium, Russia, Île-de-France in Paris, the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn, the National Orchestra of Montpellier, the Orchestra of the Province of Asturias in Oviedo, Spain, the National Orchestra of Uruguay, the National Radio Orchestra of Romania, the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra, the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, the Israel Symphony Orchestra Rishon LeZion, and others. He has performed a wide variety of French, German, Russian, and Italian operatic repertory from Gluck to Kurt Weill, appearing in the opera houses of Turin, Dresden, Kiel, Brussels, Monte Carlo, Warsaw, Bilbao, Theater an der Wien, Theater an der Wien in Vienna, the popular opera in Vienna, the Royal Danish Opera House, the Israeli Opera, and others. As a composer, Rani Calderon is now completing a very large-scale opera based on Victor Hugo’s classic novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame. He performed the prelude of the opera at the Colmar Festival in France in 2019. His other works include song cycles in Russian and a lyrical setting for bass, choir, and orchestra, “To Ovid,” with lyrics by Pushkin. As a pianist he has performed a series of explicated recitals of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas, seven recitals of Chopin, and others, and has also appeared as soloist and conductor of Mozart concerti. He speaks eight languages: Hebrew, English, Italian, French, German, Spanish, Russian, and ancient Greek.