Luciano Berio at the Bastille Opera

One of the great names of contemporary music. Born in 1925 to a family of musicians, Luciano Berio studied music in Milan and discovered the musicians of the second school of Vienna (Schönberg, Webern, Berg), and modern composers such as Stravinsky or Milhaud. Under the influence of Luigi Dallapiccola, he took an interest in serialist music (Nones), and he participated in the famous meetings of Darmstadt where he mixed with Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, György Ligeti... Berio turned toward electro-acoustic music (Thema, Omaggio a Joyce). In the seriesSequenza he explored instrumental virtuosity and the infinite possibilities of the human voice with his wife Cathy Berberian.

He achieved international fame withLaboryntus 2andSinfonia, which used the collage technique. Then he wrote Coro, which mixes languages and folklores, and two operas:La vera storiaandUn re in ascolto. For this human and imaginative musician, technical research never masked expression or sensitivity - and humour... His activities were numerous: founding the Studio di Fonologia Musicale in Milan, held a series of concerts and published a musical review. He managed IRCAM in Paris in the 70s, then founded Tempo Reale in Florence and led a career as a teacher in California, Harvard and New York, without mentioning his activities as a conductor... He died in Rome in 2003.