The Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della Rai made its official debut in 1994 with Georges Prêtre and Giuseppe Sinopoli.
Fabio Luisi is Director Emeritus of OSN Rai and Robert Trevino holds the role of Principal Guest Director.
Jeffrey Tate was Principal Guest Conductor from 1998 to 2002 and Honorary Conductor from 2002 to 2011. Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos was its Principal Conductor from 2001 to 2007. Gianandrea Noseda was Principal Guest Conductor from 2003 to 2006. From 1996 to 2001, Eliahu Inbal was Honorary Conductor of the Orchestra. From 2009 to 2016 Juraj Valčuha has been the Orchestra’s Principal Conductor. James Conlon was the last Principal Conductor from 2016 to 2020.
Other important guest conductors include Carlo Maria Giulini, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Mstislav Rostropovič, Myung-Whun Chung, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Yuri Ahronovitch, Valery Gergiev, Marek Janowski, Semyon Bychkov, Kirill Petrenko, Vladimir Jurowski, Riccardo Chailly, Gerd Albrecht, Hartmud Hänchen, Mikko Franck, Christoph Eschenbach, Daniel Harding and Daniele Gatti.
The Orchestra had numerous prestigious engagements worldwide: besides its international tours (Japan, England, Ireland, France, Spain, Canary, South America, Greece), and an invitation in 2006 to the Salzburg Festival and to Berlin’s Philharmonie, more recent years have seen the Orchestra performing at the Abu Dhabi Classics Festival in the United Arab Emirates in 2011, and in tours in Germany, Austria and Slovakia, including the debut at the Musikverein in Vienna. The Rai Orchestra also made its debuts at the RadiRO Festival in 2012 and at the Enescu Festival in Bucharest in 2013. It held concert tours in Germany and Switzerland in the Autumn of 2014, in Russia in October 2015 and in the south of Italy in April 2016. In December 2016 the Orchestra made its debut in Oman (Muscat) at the Royal Opera House with Beethoven 9th Symphony and in October 2017 at the Vienna Konzerthaus.
In August 2017 and 2018 the RAI Orchestra was in residence at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro. It was there again in 2019 for the 40th anniversary of the Festival and it will be once more in 2021.
