Oleg Caetani made his Australian debut in 2001 with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. In January 2005 he took up the post of MSO's Chief Conductor and Artistic Director. An opera and concert conductor, he considers these two aspects of his work equally important.

He has a particularly close relationship with the Staatskapelle Dresden which he has conducted for almost three decades (the first time when he was 20 years old), the Munich Philharmonic and the Giuseppe Verdi Orchestra in Milan, with whom he toured South America. He is currently recording Italy's first complete cycle of Shostakovitch's symphonies, with the Giuseppe Verdi Orchestra. The CDs, including the Fifth and Sixth symphonies have won several prizes: 10/10 from Classical Today in USA, ffff Télérama in France and Record Geijutsu in Japan.

In 2001 he made his debut at La Scala, Milan with Turandot and opened the season of the Theatre of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino with Don Pasquale. Recent engagements have included Sir John in Love (first fully-staged revival since 1958) at the English National Opera, Benvenuto Cellini in Strasbourg, Norma and The Magic Flute in San Francisco, Otello in La Scala, Milan, The Flying Dutchman in Rome, The Girl of the Golden West in Seattle, L'enfant et les sortileges in Paris at the Théâtre des Champs Élysées, The Golden Cockerel in Toulouse, Simon Boccanegra in Trieste (opening of the season 2003/4), The Magic Flute in San Francisco, Khovanschina at the ENO and Verdi's Requiem with the Accademia di Santa Cecilia.

His musical talent was discovered by Nadia Boulanger, with whom he studied with for several years. At the Rome Conservatory of Santa Cecilia he attended conducting classes with Franco Ferrara and composition classes with Irma Ravinale. In Rome, at the age of 17, he made his theatre debut with a production of Monteverdi's Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda. He then went to the Moscow Conservatory to study conducting with Kyrill Kondrashin and musicology with Nadezhda Nikolaev. He graduated from the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in conducting with Ilya Mussin.

Winner of the RAI Turin and Karajan Competitions in Berlin, he started his professional career as assistant to Otmar Suitner at the German State Opera, Berlin. He has since been Chief Conductor at the German National Theatre in Weimar, First Conductor at the Frankfurt Opera House, Music Director first at the Wiesbaden Opera House, later at the Chemnitz Opera House and of the Robert Schumann Philharmonic Orchestra. During these years he was a regular guest conductor with the Bavarian Radio Symphony, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra.

He currently records for Arts, Claves, EMI, Marco Polo and Orfeo. His first recordings with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra for Chandos and ABC Classics (MSO Live series), have recently been released. His Chandos recording of Alexandre Tansman's Symphonies No. 4, 5 and 6 with the MSO recently received a 2006 Diapason d'Or (Discovery) award.