Nayer Nagui has been appointed artistic director and principal conductor at the Cairo Opera Orchestra. Born in Alexandria in 1970, Nayer Nagui attended the Alexandria Conservatoire, where he studied piano under the Italian Professor Herta Pappo, and obtained an advanced certificate in piano performance and the theory of music from the Royal School of Music in 1996. He studied conducting with Professor Maestro Dominique at the Rouits at L'Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris where he obtained a diploma in conducting in 2001. Nagui's resume includes manyconcerts conducted with the Cairo Symphony Orchestra, Cairo Opera Orchestra and Bibliotheca Alexandrina Orchestra. He also shared the baton with a French conductor, Michel Piquemal, in the yearly International Festival of Coro de Tres Culturas in Morocco. His assignments outside Egypt include conducting the Lecce Symphony Orchestra and Calabria Chamber Orchestra in Italy, the European Camerata in the UK, the Ensemble Georges Solti in Hungary, the Bonner Vokalisten in Germany, as well as the Moroccan Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the Algerian Symphony Orchestra. Nagui is the founder and musical director of the Cairo Celebration Choir, consisting of 120 amateur singers performing famous choral works in Egypt. He wrote a number of compositions and arrangements for choirs, orchestras and soloists. He alsoworks as a musical director of Disney's dubbing animation into Arabic. ---------------------- Cairo Opera Orchestra is one of the many companies operating under the umbrella of the Cairo Opera House. The orchestra was formed 1994 and its repertoire includes a vast number of celebrated classic ballets and famous operas or operettas performed in collaboration with the Cairo Opera Ballet Company or the Cairo Opera Company. Sherif Mohie El-Din was appointed conductor of the orchestra in 1995. Later, the orchestra was headed by various Egyptian and international conductors. In 2002, Nader Abbassi was appointed principal conductor and artistic director of the Cairo Opera Orchestra, a post which he held until the end of last season.
