Renowned Slovenian conductor Simon Krečič will conduct Verdi's monumental opera Don Carlo, directed by Goran Golovko, at the gala opening of the 72nd Split Summer Festival.

Conductor and pianist Simon Krečič completed his piano studies at the Ljubljana Academy of Music in 2002 as the last graduate of the esteemed Slovenian pianist Aci Bertoncelj. In 2005, he completed postgraduate piano studies in the class of Aleksandar Madžar at the Bern University of the Arts. During his postgraduate training in Switzerland, he also began studying conducting under the mentorship of Dominique Roggen. In November 2008, he took part in the international conducting competition in Grosseto, Italy, where he won third prize. Since March 2009, he has been a regular guest of the Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra and the RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra. He has conducted numerous concerts within subscription cycles (Modri abonman, Kromatika, Mozartine), protocol and special-occasion concerts, and many recordings. He completed his conducting studies in September 2012 at the Ljubljana Academy of Music in the class of Milivoj Šurbek with a ballet premiere set to the music of Igor Stravinsky, produced by the SNG Opera and Ballet Ljubljana. At the Ljubljana opera house, he also conducted the ballet Don Quixote. He collaborates with many distinguished domestic and international soloists, such as Dubravka Tomšič Srebotnjak, Eugen Indjic, Aleksandar Madžar, Branimir Slokar, Wonji Kim Ozim, Baiba Skride, Harriet Krijgh, Lauma Skride, and others. His broad symphonic repertoire encompasses many fundamental works by Mozart, Beethoven, and Haydn, through all the major Romantic composers (Brahms, Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn), and on to the music of the 20th and 21st centuries. Since December 2013, he has been the artistic director of the SNG Maribor Opera.

In the meantime, he has also established himself strongly as an opera conductor on the international scene. In March 2011, he was assistant conductor for the production of Werther at the Teatro Real in Madrid. In February 2015, he conducted Verdi's opera Macbeth at the Teatro Verdi in Pisa, directed by the celebrated Italian director Dario Argento, as well as a symphonic concert at the Palermo Classica festival in Sicily. In July 2016, he conducted the ballet Faun, Carmen (Debussy, Shchedrin) during the guest performance of the SNG Maribor Ballet at the Dubrovnik Summer Festival. In October 2016, at the Verdi Festival in the composer's birthplace of Busseto, he conducted the opera I masnadieri (The Bandits) in a production by the Teatro Regio of Parma; the first Maribor performance of Wagner's music drama Das Rheingold in January 2017; Rossini's opera La Cenerentola (Cinderella) in March 2017 in Ljubljana; Verdi's opera Un ballo in maschera (A Masked Ball) in November 2017 in China (at the Tianjin Grand Theatre and the Harbin Grand Theatre); Puccini's Tosca in Rovigo, Skopje, and Rijeka; Donizetti's comic opera La fille du régiment in February 2018 at the Teatro Verdi in Trieste; and Weber's Der Freischütz in August 2018 in Rheinsberg near Berlin.

In recent years, he has also conducted Jacques Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann and Tchaikovsky's The Maid of Orleans in Ljubljana; Turandot in Rovigo and Ferrara; The Elixir of Love in Trieste; and the ballet evening Danza d'autore at the Teatro Massimo in Palermo. He regularly collaborates with prominent figures in the opera world, such as José Cura, Piero Giuliacci, Bruno de Simone, Dimitra Theodossiou, Carlos Almaguer, and others. Among his recent symphonic concerts, his collaborations with the Prague and Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestras, the Opera of the Ivan pl. Zajc Croatian National Theatre in Rijeka, the Savaria Symphony Orchestra from Szombathely in Hungary, and the Sicilian Symphony Orchestra from Italy are worth noting. His collaboration with the choreographer Edward Clug has also been highly fruitful and acclaimed; in recent years, the two have co-created as many as three ballets — the scenic cantata Carmina Burana by Carl Orff, Les noces (The Wedding) and Le sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring) by Igor Stravinsky, and Faust set to the music of Milko Lazar. For his exceptional achievements in the field of culture, the City Municipality of Maribor awarded him the Glazer Charter in 2019.

Don Carlo is scheduled for 14, 16, and 18 July at 9 p.m. at the Peristyle.