After completing a classical education he qualified in piano, composition and conducting, specialising in conducting with Franco Ferrara.

He has conducted operas, concerts and ballets at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, the Teatro Colòn in Buenos Aires, the Arena in Verona, the Massimo in Palermo, the Teatro di San Carlo and the Orchestra Alessandro Scarlatti in Naples.
Since 1992, Massimo Biscardi has dedicated his career to directing the Teatro Lirico di Cagliari as Artistic Director. The theatre has become particularly well-known recently for the production of rare or completely unknown operas, such as Die Feen by Wagner, Dalibor by Smetana, Cerevicki and Opricnik by Tchaikovskyi, Die Aegyptische Helena by Richard Strauss, Goyescas by Granados, A village Romeo and Juliet by Delius, Euryanthe by Carl Maria von Weber, Alfonso und Estrella by Franz Schubert, Hans Heiling by Marschner, Oedipus by Enescu, Chérubin by Massenet, Die Vögel by Braunfels. These productions have earned the theatre the Italian music critics award “Premio Abbiati” for “the artistic quality and determination in the commitment to the programming and presentation of rare titles from the opera repertoire, substantiated by the recent and on-going Italian premières”.

During his artistic directorship the Teatro Lirico di Cagliari Orchestra has been conducted by several conductors, amongst whom are Carlo Maria Giulini, Georges Prêtre, Mstislav Rostropovich, Ivàn Fischer, Gennadi Rozhdesvensky, Emmanuel Krivine, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Frans Brüggen, Ton Koopman and Lorin Maazel, who became the first guest conductor of the Orchestra in 2003.

For opera productions, he has worked closely with directors such as Luca Ronconi, Graham Vick, Ley Dodin, Giancarlo Cobelli, Pierluigi Pizzi, Stephen Medcalf ( “Premio Abbiati” for Carmen , a new production for the Teatro Lirico di Cagliari), Denis Krief (“Premio Abbiati” for Lucia di Lammermoor, a new production for the Teatro Lirico di Cagliari), scenographers such as Losef Svoboda, Pierluigi Pizzi, Ezio Frigerio, Margherita Palli and costume designers such as Luisa Spinatelli, Pedro Moreno, Jamie Vartan, Vera Marzot and Maurizio Millenotti.

He has enthusiastically promoted works created by contemporary Italian composers such as Aldo Clementi, Azio Corghi, Sylvano Bussotti, Ivan Fedele, Fabio Nieder, Alberto Colla, Carlo Boccadoro and Francesco Antonioni, who have written new compositions commissioned by the Teatro Lirico di Cagliari.

Massimo Biscardi is particularly interested in the evolution of choreographic art and has also collaborated with choreographers such as William Forsythe, Heinz Spoerli, Victor Ullate, Maurice Bejart, Maguy Marin and John Neumayer.