Valentina Peleggi was already taking piano and violin lessons, but the full expressive potential of music didn’t strike her until she joined a children’s choir at 13 and was part of a performance of Carl Orff’s explosive “Carmina Burana” with the Orchestra of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Italy.
“There is something so important for a kid, for anybody, just to be exposed personally to a live concert,” she said. “I really felt for the first time something bigger than me. That really moved me and made a difference.”
Now an up-and-coming conductor, Peleggi, 40, is set to make her Ravinia Festival debut on July 21, joining Chief Conductor Marin Alsop and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in Roxanna Panufnik’s 17-minute work for two choirs and orchestra, “Across the Line of Dreams.”
The concert, which also includes selections by Gabriela Ortiz and Gabriela Montero, is part of Ravinia’s annual Breaking Barriers mini-festival, which this year focuses on women composers. It runs July 21-23 with concerts, panel discussions, workshops and other events.
In addition to being written by a woman, “Across the Line of Dreams” pays tribute to two heroic and celebrated 19th-century female contemporaries who lived on opposite sides of the world: American abolitionist Harriet Tubman and Indian rebel leader Rani Lakshmibai.
“It’s a really visionary piece,” Peleggi said. “We’re telling the story of two incredible women.”
Panufnik, a British composer who wrote music for the recent coronation of King Charles III, represents each of the two freedom fighters with one choir and one half of the orchestra — Tubman with woodwinds, brass and percussion and Lakshmibai with harp, piano and strings.
For this performance, Alsop will lead one group and Peleggi the other. The two commissioned the work along with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and they led that ensemble’s 2019 premiere and a subsequent presentation with the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra in Brazil.
The first movement is devoted to Tubman, the second to Lakshmibai and the third is a dialogue between the two, with text for all three sections by Jessica Duchen incorporating direct quotations from the two women.
“It’s incredibly complicated but beautiful,” Peleggi said of the third section. “It’s written in two different meters, so you will see these two conductors doing something completely different but hopefully lining up at each bar.”
Starting nearly decade ago, Alsop became a mentor to Peleggi, a 2015 recipient of a Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship, which provides coaching and other career support for emerging female conductors.
In addition, Peleggi worked with Alsop at the São Paulo Symphony, where the elder conductor was music director in 2013-20. Peleggi has held several posts there and continues as its resident conductor.
The Florence native’s interest in conducting dates from that early experience with “Carmina Burana.” Leading the concert was famed maestro Zubin Mehta, who now holds the title of honorary conductor for life at the Florence festival.
She was almost overwhelmed by the enormity of forces gathered for the first rehearsal, but she felt that through Mehta her voice could flow and be part of the whole.
“That was the start, when I really fell in love with music,” she said.
After initial musical studies in Florence, where she still maintains a residence, she went on to graduate studies at the Conservatorio Santa Cecilia in Rome, and Royal Academy of Music in London.
From the start of her career, Peleggi has divided her time between conducting opera and symphonic and choral music.
“I think my heart is split in three parts, and I think the three parts are equally important to me,” she said.
One of her earliest posts was serving from 2005 through 2015 as principal conductor and music director of the University Choir in Florence, where she remains honorary conductor. More recently, she was principal conductor and artistic adviser of the São Paulo Symphony Chorus, which she called the best professional such ensemble in South America.
The conductor has served as music director of the Richmond (Virginia) Symphony since 2020-21, and she has injected new energy into the regional orchestra with an array of groundbreaking projects, including an experiment with augmented reality glasses that supplied concurrent visuals during a 2022 concert.
In addition, the orchestra management and musicians have partnered with a company that makes fabrics for the sports world to design concert apparel that is more functional and comfortable. After some trials last season, the orchestra will don the new look starting this fall.
“It’s easy to wash,” Peleggi said. “It doesn’t need to be ironed. It looks pretty fancy and it’s genderless.”
As for the future, the conductor is not pining for any specific job. “The only thing I really care about is to keep growing,” she said. “Wherever I’ll be, whatever repertoire I’ll be doing, I just want to push myself, and everybody who works with me, to be excellent.”
