Appointed in January 2020 as the eighteenth Music Director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, he inaugurated the 2020/21 season. He collaborates regularly with artists such as Hilary Hahn, Daniil Trifonov, Sergei Babayan, Yuja Wang, Yo-Yo Ma, Branford Marsalis, and Alisa Weilerstein, as well as with composers Michael Abels and Carlos Simon. His repertoire with the DSO ranges from Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler, and Strauss to Bernstein, Ellington, Florence Price, and Margaret Bonds, blending European tradition with American roots. Bignamini’s international career includes regular appearances with the Opéra de Paris, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Accademia di Santa Cecilia, BBC Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera of New York, Wiener Staatsoper, and Bayerische Staatsoper. In the United States, he has conducted the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, as well as the Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Milwaukee, and Minnesota symphonies, and the Cleveland Orchestra at the Blossom Festival. In the operatic field, recent highlights include acclaimed performances of Il trovatore at the Chorégies d’Orange and Otello at Teatro Massimo in Palermo. He now returns to the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma after the successful productions of Aida, Il trovatore, and La traviata in Sofia Coppola’s staging with costumes by Valentino—a production also presented on tour in Japan and released on Blu-ray. In Italy, he has performed at the Arena di Verona, the Verdi Festival in Parma, the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, Teatro La Fenice in Venice, Teatro San Carlo in Naples, and Teatro Regio in Turin. Active in Asia as well, he has conducted the Osaka Philharmonic, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony, Sendai Philharmonic, and New Japan Philharmonic, performing a repertoire spanning from Romantic symphonism to twentieth-century works, and led Andrea Chénier for NHK. He is also committed to training young musicians, regularly collaborating with the Interlochen Center for the Arts and with the Asian Youth Orchestra, with which he has led international tours featuring talented young artists from across Asia.