If there’s one story that encapsulates the spirit of Nil Venditti, a rising star in the conducting firmament, it was the moment last year when she turned to the audience in the middle of Mendelssohn’s “Reformation” Symphony to check everyone was enjoying it.
Venditti, a 31-year-old Italian-Turkish maestro, likes to talk with audiences before, after—and even during—performances. But on this occasion—with the CRR Symphony Orchestra in Istanbul—she got a reaction she didn’t expect. A six-year-old boy named Mert shouted back at her that he was bored out of his mind and wanted to go home.
Venditti promptly invited him onto the podium and asked him to conduct the next, slow movement. A video of the moment shows the tiny Venditti—not much taller than the boy—hold Mert’s arms as he sheds his initial shyness and opens his eyes to the wonder of what’s happening.
“I’m speaking to him as he conducts,” she remembers over tea in London. “And the orchestra plays beautifully because everyone is actually feeling so emotional. And then Mert really started to look at people as he started crying with his own emotion. His mum later said it had changed his life; he had never felt anything like that, and he now wanted to become a musician.”
“Maybe I’m not changing the world so fast, but one person at a time,” she laughs.
Venditti is, in many ways, the opposite of the archetype who, for centuries, has stood in front of the orchestra in white-tie and tails. She is 5’2” in her trainers, with a shock of unruly black hair tumbling over her shoulders. On the rostrum, she smiles, sways, dances, cajoles—“like a small benign bomb exploding in the world of classical music”, as one reviewer wrote of a recent performance with the Royal Northern Sinfonia in Gateshead.
During that concert, she alerted the audience to listen out for bar 25 in the finale of Mendelssohn’s “Italian” Symphony. “This is where, if the conductor is too fast, the strings fall apart.” As they neared that moment, she turned to the expectant listeners and gave a conspiratorial grin.
This summer, she is conducting Rossini and Respighi at the Proms with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, as well as Verdi’s Macbeth at Longborough Festival Opera, with the Ukrainian soprano Viktoriia Balan as Lady Macbeth. Her diary is filling up years ahead.
In addition to her obvious musicianship, she is being compared to Gustavo Dudamel, the Venezuelan conductor whose infectious energy has connected with new audiences around the world, especially through the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra.
Venditti grew up in Perugia, the daughter of an Italian father and a Turkish mother. She fell in love with the cello at six years old, studied at the conservatory in Perugia, and eventually played in the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia under Antonio Pappano.
“One day, the cello section played a joke on me—to humiliate me, I think—and got the conductor to ask me up to direct part of the rehearsal. It was horrific—but I actually enjoyed it. So I was packed off to a teacher, and a year later I won my first competition in Italy. Suddenly, I had tours and concerts as a conductor, and a new life just opened up in front of me, so I decided to take this very seriously.”
Venditti studied further with the Estonian conductor Paavo Järvi and enrolled with the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste under the guidance of Johannes Schlaefli.
Schlaefli remembers her with a special affection. “She’s someone so curious and so direct and openminded, so this was a very nice situation for a teacher. I mean, such a personality—no boundaries, outgoing, embracing people, embracing challenges, embracing questions. Everything was ready, it was great fun.”
And so Venditti embarked on a life of conducting different orchestras as the musical establishment worked out what to make of this wildly charismatic free spirit. Schlaefli remembers some rocky times as Venditti learned how to win over the doubters. “With the class we went to different orchestras, and some of them just loved her because she has this radiance, and this joy—and some bonded immediately,” he says.
“And for other orchestras, sometimes it was kind of too much, and she’d get upset. But now she’s found a strategy to keep her own mind clear and not get distracted by these emotional turbulences.”
How quickly can Venditti tell what sort of rapport she has with a new orchestra? “Oh, in 30 seconds. Very quickly,” she shoots back. “Immediately, you know what kind of beast you’re dealing with. Are they looking at each other when you start, or are they looking at you? That’s quite a difference, because if they look at each other, they’re going on automatic. So, you know that’s gonna be a difficult orchestra because you have to win them over.”
‘I don’t want to say orchestras aren’t sexist, because it’s simply not true, but it’s improving’
Venditti herself acknowledges she has to overcome barriers: “Of course, there’s a difference between being a man or a woman. But also, on top of that, I’m young—the worst!—and a woman! Orchestras are way less sexist [than they used to be]. I don’t want to say they’re not sexist, because it’s simply not true, but it’s improving.”
As an example of hard-to-shift prejudices, she recalls an occasion when her partner, a musician, showed up at rehearsal and her management got a call asking if this was a sign that she was feeling insecure. “Whereas if a man brings his wife, usually orchestras react like, ‘Do you need any coffee or tea?’”
Venditti has been building her repertoire slowly—with a focus on opera and the mainstream classical symphonic canon—but is also a champion of contemporary Turkish composers and has a yen to do more Sibelius, Debussy, Ravel… and Elgar. The National Orchestra of Wales has persuaded her to learn both of Elgar’s symphonies for performance in coming seasons.
Meanwhile, there is Macbeth in July in the eccentric opera house built out of a converted chicken shed in Longborough in the heart of the Cotswolds.
“We had been interested in working with Nil for a while, and Macbeth felt like the perfect project,” says Longborough’s artistic director, Polly Graham. “Nil is a thrilling collaborator who brings huge energy and charisma to all her projects, along with a distinctive and special musicality. I was also very excited to propose this collaboration between Nil and the fabulous Karolina Sofulak, who is directing Macbeth. It’s one of the great pleasures of my job to bring artists together and see what they create.”
“I’m in love with Lady Macbeth,” says Venditti. “I mean, the whole plot is around her, and she comes across as such a… demonic person. But actually, later on, you discover she’s incredibly fragile when you see her in her solitude.”
“This was written in 1847—the same year as Wuthering Heights—and here’s a character who is so three-dimensional. And the music! My gosh, even if it’s an early Verdi, you have all the power you find in Otello, 40 years later. I see the same composer growing and growing and growing, and you cannot understand Otello without hearing the younger Verdi.”
And with that, she is off to prepare for her next concert and tend to her social media—she has close to 50,000 followers, and rising, on Instagram. It’s all part of her mission to break down barriers. Even if that can sometimes mean going one six-year-old at a time.
