Contact
Departments
Opera Studies
Education
Master of Music in Collaborative Piano Performance - Boston University
Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance- Boston University
Ensembles
San Francisco Opera
Courses Taught
Artist Diploma in Opera Studies
Q&A
What is your hometown?
East Greenwich, RI
What is your favorite recording?
Das Lied von der Erde - Bernstein/VPO/King/Fischer-Dieskau. I picked up this CD at Tower Records in Boston based solely on the cover and wanting to get to know Mahler a little better. From the first horn call to the fade of the last ‘ewig…’, my ears were opened to a viscerally intense approach of music making that has inspired me to this day!
What are you passionate about outside of music?
I’m an avid cook/baker, so I’m always perusing recipes either on my phone or in cookbooks (or now on social media). I also do a fair bit of carpentry and woodworking when needed at home - I love to collect tools that I use 2-3x a year…I’m also very immersed and involved in (by way of my husband) the San Francisco drag scene!
Who were your major teachers?
Shiela Kibbe (Piano), Bertica Shulman Cramer (Piano), and Louis Salemno (Conducting)
What is a favorite quote that you repeatedly tell students?
"Performance is an act of generosity!"
What question do you wish students would ask sooner rather than later?
I don’t know what you meant by ______ - can you explain?
What was the defining moment when you decided to pursue music as a career?
I knew this was what I’d be doing at the age of 6 when I took my first piano lesson.
What was a turning point in your career?
My time in the Adler Fellowship both prepared me for the career I’m having, but also made me double down on San Francisco as the place I wanted most to call home.
What is your daily practice routine?
Major scales/arpeggios, Bach WTC, then either studying at the piano or orchestra scores with a trusty Blackwing pencil.
If you could play only three composers for the rest of your life, who would they be?
Ravel, Puccini, Mozart? This is an impossible question.
From a music history perspective, what year and city are most important to you, and why?
I’m really enjoying focusing on Belle Époque Paris at the moment: the visual art (Impressionists, birth of the modern lithograph by Chéret), the incredible mix of serious and salon music coming from the late Offenbach through Debussy, Fauré and Ravel, incredible writings of Rimbaud, Proust and Baudelaire, and the general Moulin-Rouge-i-ness of it all!
What is your unrealized project?
A fully staged Harawi
What do you think makes a concert experience unique?
I think we get stuck when we try too hard to make everything new and different - I welcome both of those things in programming and performance practices, but not as means to their own end. Rather, I think we have unique experiences when we just use our artistic sensibilities to do readings of the material we’re presenting from an honest point of view.
Please list your most important collaborations.
Nikola Printz - “March Madness”
Melody Moore - Carnegie Hall Recital
Florentine Opera - ongoing relationship programming and conducting chamber opera
What recordings can we hear you on? (Please list five or fewer and specify record label.)
Copland: Symphony #3 San Francisco Symphony (piano), I worked on the Great Performances broadcast of Jake Heggie’s Moby Dick as well as the audio recording of Great Scott.
Biography
Sought after for his ‘finely-calibrated leadership’ and ‘ebullient performance[s]’, conductor, recitalist and coach Robert Mollicone has become an established presence in North American concert halls and opera houses. As a member of San Francisco Opera’s music staff, he has worked on 50+ productions spanning the breadth of the repertoire, including Rusalka, Der Ring des Nibelungen, Les Troyens, and Don Carlo. Equally committed to the development of the American operatic canon, he has helped bring several new operas by composers such as Jake Heggie, Tobias Picker, and John Adams to life. This season, he conducted the company’s inaugural Pride Concert featuring Saphira Crystal, Jamie Barton, Brian Mulligan and Nikola Printz.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, he has conducted performances with Opera San Jose (Where Angels Fear to Tread, Silent Night), San Francisco Opera (Opera in the Park 2014/2019, Christmas with Sol3 Mio), Festival Opera (Carmen, La voix humaine) and West Edge Opera (L’arbore di Diana, Elizabeth Cree), where he “presided [...] with a fine feeling for pacing and detail”. He debuted with the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony at the opening of their 2024-25 season.
Other regional credits include Austin Opera (Ariadne auf Naxos) and Florentine Opera (L’enfant et les sortilèges, Songbird, Scalia/Ginsburg). He served as cover conductor for the European premiere of John Adams’ Girls of the Golden West and has appeared as cover with St. Louis Symphony and the Minnesota Orchestra. Mollicone also performs in recital with collaborators including Amina Edris, Pene Pati, Ailyn Pérez, Nicholas Phan, and Jamie Barton, with whom he was lauded for ‘miracles of sensitive expression’. He is also regularly engaged to train emerging artists as faculty member of the Adler Fellowship and the Boston Wagner Institute.