Since its founding in 1994, “Academia Montis Regalis” has established itself as a noteworthy professional orchestra thanks to its intense concert activity and numerous recordings, under the direction of the world’s most important specialists in early music – Ton Koopman, Jordi Savall, Christopher Hogwood, Reinhardt Goebel, Monica Huggett, Lucy van Dael, Luigi Mangiocavallo, Enrico Gatti, Chiara Banchini and Alessandro De Marchi, who was appointed official conductor of the orchestra a few years ago. Having built an extensive repertoire, fit for a vast concert scene, the orchestra currently performs regularly in the most relevant concert institutions and during Italian and European festivals; from 2010 it will be the Innsbruck International Festival’s resident orchestra. Montis Regalis has also been collaborating for years with Turin’s Unione Musicale to create “L’Altro Suono”, a seventeenth and eighteenth century music festival. During the next musical seasons, they plan on performing – and recording – a selection of eighteenth century theatrical operas, as well as concerts in some of the most important opera theaters in Europe. In 1995, Academia Montis Regalis started a significant project with the French record company OPUS 111 (now Naïve/Opus 111), recording for the first time many Piedmontese works from the eighteenth century and some of Vivaldi’s manuscripts amongst those preserved in Turin’s National Library. Some of these recordings won prestigious critics choice awards, such as the Diapason d’Or, the Choque du Monde de la Musique, and the Gramophone Choice. Academia Montis Regalis also performs as a smaller ensemble, without conductor, having acquired the prestigious instrumental ensemble “L’Astrée”, which basically represents the Orchestra’s chamber music counterpart. In keeping with its focus on education, it has founded a second orchestra called “I Giovani della Montis Regalis” (“The Youngsters of Montis Regalis”), based on a scholarship structure and subdivided into five cycles that are entrusted to internationally renowned teachers. Thus, the Foundation is able to create a new generation of excellence for its professional orchestra: after five years of studies, in fact, the best young musicians in the school have the opportunity to perform with the professional orchestra during the following seasons. In 2005, Academia Montis Regalis was awarded the prestigious Abbiati Award for its efforts to highlight early music.