Christian Thielemann

Born in Berlin in 1959, Christian Thielemann studied viola, piano, and conducting in his native city. He launched his career as a répétiteur at the Deutsche Oper Berlin in 1978, and Herbert von Karajan hired him as his assistant the following year. Thielemann moved to the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf as First Kapellmeister in 1985, was General Music Director at the Theater Nürnberg from 1988 to 1992, and held the same position at the Deutsche Oper Berlin from 1997 to 2004. He subsequently took on the reins with the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, a position he held until 2011. From 2012 to 2024, Thielemann was Principal Conductor of the Staatskapelle Dresden; he also shaped the Salzburg Easter Festival with the Staatskapelle for ten years. In the 2024-25 season, he will take over as General Music Director of the Staatsoper Berlin and the Berlin Staats­kapelle and will conduct a new production of Strauss’s Die schweigsame Frau. Thielemann has been associated with the Bayreuth Festival for almost a quarter of a century; in 2025, he will perform Lohengrin there. His Wagner, Strauss, and Bruckner interpretations in particular have earned him a high reputation as a specialist in late German Romanticism. His repertoire also includes works by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schumann as well as French music. Thielemann makes regular guest appearances with the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic Orchestras, whose New Year’s Concert he conducted in 2019 and 2024. He has recorded the complete Beethoven and Bruckner symphonies with the Vienna Philharmonic. Thielemann has published books on the music of Wagner and Beethoven as well. He was awarded the Richard Wagner Prize in 2015 and, in 2022, the Decoration of Honor of the State of Salzburg and the Coat of Arms Medal in Gold of the City of Salzburg. He holds the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, is an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Music in London, has received several honorary doctorates, and is patron of the Richard Wagner Sites in Graupa.

Lucerne Festival debut on 23 March 2002 leading the Munich Philharmonic in works by Debussy, Chausson, and Ravel.

August 2024