Giuseppe Sinopoli was born in Venice in 1946 and first began to take a serious interest in music at the age of twelve. He studied music at the Venice Conservatory and medicine at the University of Padua simultaneously. He graduated in 1972 with a doctoral dissertation on criminal anthropology and in psychiatry with a dissertation on the physiology of the acoustic mental area. Disappointed by his musical studies in Venice (1965-67), he attended the summer courses in Darmstadt in 1968 where he went to classes given by Bruno Maderna and Karlheinz Stockhausen. It was as a composer that he first became known during the 1970s, receiving commissions from festivals in France and the Netherlands. As a conductor, Giuseppe Sinopoli began to make a name for himself during the mid-seventies. Important stages in his early career were productions of Verdi's Aida in 1976 and Puccini's Tosca in 1977, both in Venice. His Covent Garden début followed in 1983 with Puccini's Manon Lescaut. He first appeared at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, in March 1985, when he conducted Tosca. He opened the 1985 Bayreuth Festival with a new production of Wagner's Tannhäuser. For his La Scala début in 1994 he chose Strauss's Elektra. Regular visits to Japan and the United States have ensured that Giuseppe Sinopoli's name was well known through the musical world.