Christian Badea

Christian Badea is a Romanian-American opera and symphonic conductor. A native of Bucharest, Romania, Badea's early training was as a classical violinist in Bucharest and Brussels. He later studied conducting at the Juilliard School of Music in New York. After winning the Rupert Conducting Competition in London he is invited by Gian Carlo Menotti to conduct at the Festival Of The Two Worlds at Spoleto and right after he is appointed musical director of the Italian edition of the festival, and later on in a similar position for the American edition. In the next decade he conducts at Spoleto and at Charleston a series of operas which will establish him a reputation: Menotti's Maria Golovin, The Last Savage and The Saint of Bleecker Street, and also Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth from Mtsensk and Samuel Barber's Antony and Cleopatra to great acclaim. His recording of Samuel Barber's opera Antony and Cleopatra received a Grammy in 1985. In 1983 he is appointed artistic director of the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, in Columbus, Ohio. During his nine-year tenure here he records two discs with the music of Roger Sessions and Peter Mennin praised by the musical critics. From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christi...) under Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...)