The orchestra that makes its home in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall has only had one American music director in the last two generations. So it’s easy to forget that the 100-strong band is, after all, the National Symphony Orchestra of the United States. Maybe that’s why it has felt so obvious for the NSO to just go ahead and promote the Italian charm and charisma of its new music director, Gianandrea Noseda, who’s now much of the way through his first year at the helm. 

But there are so many other assets that Maestro Noseda brings to Washington in an era when the Kennedy Center is diversifying its programs to touch almost all areas of musical and popular culture. With a huge background in Russian symphonies and operas gained at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, a string of Italian successes at the Metropolitan Opera that morphed into consecutive hits in the Met’s French opera repertoire, and an enormous discography recorded at the BBC’s provincial orchestra in soccer-mad Manchester, England (where he had to balance fan loyalties with his own beloved hometown soccer club, AC Milan), Maestro Noseda loves to mix various cultural influences.