Sought after for his ‘finely-calibrated leadership’ and ‘ebullient performance[s]’, conductor, recitalist and coach Robert Mollicone has become a familiar face in opera houses across the US and Europe. As a member of San Francisco Opera’s music staff, he has acted in capacities including assistant to former Music Director Nicola Luisotti, assistant conductor, prompter and coach/pianist, and has worked on 40+ productions spanning the breadth of the repertoire, including Rusalka, Der Ring des Nibelungen, Les Troyens, and Don Carlo. Equally committed to the development of the American operatic canon, he has helped bring several new operas by composers such as Jake Heggie, Tobias Picker, and John Adams to life.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, he has conducted performances with Opera San Jose (Where Angels Fear to Tread, Silent Night), San Francisco Opera (Opera in the Park 2014/2019, Christmas with Sol3 Mio), and West Edge Opera (Elizabeth Cree, L’arbore di Diana), where he “presided [...] with a fine feeling for pacing and detail”. He made his house debut at Festival Opera conducting Carmen in August 2023. 

 Other recent debuts include Austin Opera (Ariadne auf Naxos) and Florentine Opera (L’enfant et les sortilèges), where he will return to conduct Songbird/La Périchole in 2024. Additionally he served as cover conductor for the European premiere of John Adams’ Girls of the Golden West at De Nationale Opera in Amsterdam and for La Damnation de Faust at St. Louis Symphony under Stéphane Denève. 

Mollicone also regularly shares the recital stage with artists including Denyce Graves, Joyce El-Khoury, Brian Jagde, Ailyn Pérez, Nicholas Phan, and Jamie Barton, with whom he was lauded for ‘miracles of sensitive expression’. He made his Carnegie Hall debut alongside soprano Melody Moore in May 2016. He is also engaged to train emerging artists as faculty member of the Adler Fellowship and Boston Wagner Institute, and is a regular guest coach at San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

He is a graduate of San Francisco Opera's Adler Fellowship, as well as of the Cafritz Young Artist Program at Washington National Opera. He holds a M. Mus. from Boston University, where he studied with Shiela Kibbe.