Composer, conductor & educator
Stefano Sacher (Trieste, 1962) holds a master’s degree in Composition from Conservatory in Udine, a degree in Choral Composition and Conducting from the Conservatory in Trieste, where he studied also piano and singing, and in Orchestral Conducting from the Conservatory in Bologna. He also graduated in Literature and Arts from the University of Trieste, with a thesis on Sergej Prokofiev’s music in movies. He furthered his Compositional studies with Antonio Bibalo in Norway and with Hans Werner Henze in Rome.
Stefano Sacher has composed songs, choral and chamber music; works that are regularly performed and broadcasted in Europe, the US, and Canada.
For theatre, he composed the opera Trobarclos (1990-91) with libretto by Mauro Rossi; the musical fairy tale The Nightingale and the Rose (1995), by Oscar Wilde; the musical Gregor in Silvija (2020-21), libretto and direction by Jasmin Kovic; and the opera “La memoria di Medea” (2016–21), libretto by U. Vicic and direction by J. Kovic.
More recently, Stefano Sacher has composed the music for the play “Buone sempre, anche da morte,” (2023) by A. Carnaroli, direction by J. Kovic and the lyrical musical “La furia del mare” (2023-25) a commission by GO!25, libretto by M. Rossi and direction by J. Kovic.
For the Bellanda Dance Company, he has composed the music for “Dolce vita,” “Miseri amori,” “Le tesi di Carlo,” (2025), and “Metamorfosi in figure.” ( 2026).
Maestro Sacher’s conducting career has taken him throughout the world, to countries such as Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Austria, Germany, Belgium, Poland, Switzerland, the U.S., Canada, the Czech Republic, Sweden, Finland, Malta, Cuba and Mongolia, where he has conducted symphonic, choral and operatic repertoire.
As a conductor he has collaborated with soloists like Pavel Berman, Emmanuele Baldini, Gervasio Tarragona Valli, Simone Sala, and Trio Rachmaninov.
He has conducted, amongst many other works, music by, Vivaldi, Bach, Haendel, Pergolesi, Haydn, Mozart, Cherubini, Rossini, Schubert, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Dvorak, Bruckner, Rheinberger, Josef Strauss, Saint-Saens, Janacek, Verdi, Puccini, Mascagni, Respighi, Bartok, Prokofiev, Kodaly, Gershwin, Ellington, Basie, K.Weill, A. Piazzolla, Viozzi, Merkù, Poulenc, Barber, Britten, Maxwell Davies, Rihm.
Sacher has been teaching music at the United World College of the Adriatic since 2001.
He has also published a book of poems, articles and essays on musicology, and was a radio host for the Italian national radio RadioRai music programs.
From 2011 to 2021 he was the artistic director of the Associazione Mozart Italia sede di Trieste, where he founded a youth orchestra, the Amadeus Adriatic Orchestra, which he conducted. He was also the artistic director of Galleria Musicale from 2009 to 2012). He was the co-artistic director of International Music Festival of the Adriatic ( 2013-2023), and is currently active with DNA Festival (as of 2023) and Adriatic Woodwinds Festival 2023 and 2024.