Marcello Viotti, 50; Conductor Was Music Director of La Fenice

Marcello Viotti, music director of Venice’s La Fenice Theatre, died Wednesday in a hospital in Munich, Germany. He was 50. His brother, Silvio Viotti, announced his death.

The Italian conductor, who also appeared at La Scala in Milan, the Metropolitan Opera in New York and other major international opera houses, had a stroke last week during a rehearsal of Jules Massenet’s “Manon” with the Munich Radio Orchestra.

Viotti fell into a coma and never regained consciousness. A German hospital spokesman said his condition deteriorated rapidly despite surgery for a blood clot in his carotid artery.

Viotti had been at the Venice theater since 2002, when it reopened after a fire that burned it to the ground in 1996. The opera house was the site of five Verdi premieres, including “La Traviata” and “Rigoletto,” as well as works by Bellini and Donizetti.

Known for conducting Italian opera passionately, Viotti also championed Massenet, whose operas he considered underrated. His first major production at the Vienna State Opera was Massenet’s “Herodiade” in 1995, with Agnes Baltsa and Placido Domingo. His first major production in Venice was Massenet’s “Thais,” and he led that composer’s “Roi de Lahore” there last December and January in a new critical edition that he helped prepare.

Born June 29, 1954, in Switzerland to Italian parents, Viotti studied piano, singing and cello at the conservatory in Lausanne. He made his debut in Geneva as conductor of a wind instrument group he founded.

Winning first prize at the Gino Marinuzzi conducting competition in Italy in 1982 kicked off his increasingly prestigious career. He was permanent guest conductor of the Teatro Regio in Turin from 1985 to 1987, artistic director of the Lucerne Opera from 1987 to 1990 and general music director in Bremen, Germany, from 1990 to 1993.

He was named permanent guest conductor of the Bavaria State Opera in Munich in 1993. From 1996 to 1999, he was also one of three chief conductors of the MDR Symphony Orchestra in Leipzig.

In 1998, he became music director of the Munich Radio Orchestra but resigned his post last fall to protest budget cuts that threatened to eliminate the orchestra. However, he continued to honor his conducting engagements, which were scheduled to run through 2006.

At the Met, Viotti had conducted Halevy’s “La Juive,” Puccini’s “La Boheme” and Verdi’s “Aida” in recent seasons. He was scheduled to lead a new production of Wagner’s “Parsifal” in Venice this spring and Verdi’s “La Traviata” with soprano Anna Netrebko at the Salzburg Festival in Austria this summer.

His recorded legacy includes Ponchielli’s “La Gioconda” with Domingo and Violeta Urmana; solo albums with Domingo, Rolando Villazon, Ramon Vargas and Vesselina Kasarova; as well as the complete symphonies of Schubert.

“I am so sad to tell you that it is finished. That’s it,” Silvio Viotti wrote in a message posted on the conductor’s website. “Marcello has finished his journey on this Earth. I don’t know what to say.”

In addition to his brother, Viotti is survived by his wife and four children.