Dario Garegnani is a conductor and musicologist.

With Divertimento Ensemble he conducted Variété with Bustric at the Teatro Franco Parenti and in the Accademia Filarmonica Romana season, Maderna’s Satyricon and programmes devoted to Francesconi and Kurtág, in the presence of the composers. He worked with Mauricio Kagel as his assistant in Venice and Buenos Aires. With the Orchestra del Teatro La Fenice he conducted works by Martina Tomner, Francesco Zorzini and Marco Marinoni within Don Giovanni a Venezia, the opening event of the 2010 Venice Biennale Musica. He returned to the Biennale in 2011 with Nono’s Incontri and Stravinsky’s Dumbarton Oaks at the Church of San Michele.

With Icarus vs Muzak he has conducted Fausto Romitelli’s Professor Bad Trip trilogy and the world premiere of Fabio Cifariello Ciardi’s Circus Audienti. For Fondazione I Teatri di Reggio Emilia he conducted Donatoni’s Alfred, Alfred and Pergolesi’s La serva padrona, conceived by Muta Imago and directed by Claudia Sorace, broadcast on OperaVision. In November 2025 he conducted the world premiere of Il sole s’era levato al suo colmo, part of the Reggio Parma Festival’s Gradus project. He has also conducted Britten’s The Little Sweep for Fondazione I Teatri di Reggio Emilia.

With the Orchestra di Padova e del Veneto he conducted the world premiere of Zeno Baldi’s Rami, with Domenico Nordio as soloist. With Roma Tre Orchestra he conducted Mozart and Vittorio Montalti’s Dittico, with violinist Marco Fiorentini. He also worked as a guest conductor for composition examinations at the Milan Conservatory, with ensembles and the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi.

A cofounder of Secret Theater and Dahu Project, he conducted Gabriele Marangoni’s SILENT, for a vocal ensemble of deaf performers, soloists and live electronics, in Reggio Emilia, at LAC Lugano and at Teatro Massimo in Cagliari. The project has also been presented at Ars Electronica in Linz. He worked with Yuval Avital on REKA, conducting percussion and the vocal crowd at its Warsaw Autumn Festival premiere in 2014. His recordings include Delli Pizzi’s Chamber Music, Albini’s Musica Ciclica and Mahler’s Fourth Symphony in Erwin Stein’s arrangement, released by Da Vinci Classics in 2022.

With Secret Theater he presented the Iranian premieres of Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire and Kammersymphonie at the Fadjr Festival in Tehran and in Shiraz. With Gabriele Marangoni he also conducted the world premieres of Mater, for one hundred alphorns, at the Endorfine festival in Lugano, and Utera, for large ensemble and choir, at Festival Aperto in Reggio Emilia, and the Diffraction project in Pisa and on tour in Kosovo. In September 2020, as performances resumed after lockdown, he conducted Figaro! Opera Camion, a one-act adaptation of Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, with the Filarmonica dell’Opera Italiana Bruno Bartoletti for Fondazione I Teatri di Reggio Emilia. The production was conceived and directed by Fabio Cherstich, with sets, costumes and video by Gianluigi Toccafondo. For Leonardo Manera’s L’ottimista, directed by Marco Rampoldi, he arranged and directed the live music and also performed on clarinet; the production was filmed by Rai5 at the Teatro Sociale in Cittadella.

He graduated in clarinet at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Milan and furthered his conducting studies with Sandro Gorli, Benjamin Zander, János Fürst and Erwin Acél, attending courses and masterclasses in London, Vienna and Saint Petersburg. He graduated with honours in Cultural Heritage and Musicology at the University of Milan, with theses on Offenbach and the spoken chorus in twentieth-century music. In 2010 he was a finalist in the selection for assistant conductor of the Ensemble intercontemporain in Paris. He teaches music theory, clarinet and saxophone at the Istituto Musicale Rusconi in Rho.

He has taught for over twenty years, covering music theory, music history, musical dramaturgy, harmony, rhythm and aural training. His experience includes extensive online music education, with specialist courses and programmes for a wider audience.

On 12 November 2026, Dario Garegnani will conduct at Wien Modern, at Vienna’s Arnold Schönberg Center, in Glitch Eden – Verschmelzung with Icarus Ensemble and ensemble N. The concert follows the performance in Reggio Emilia on 25 September.
