Ingo Metzmacher

Ingo Metzmacher, who was born in 1957, studied piano, music theory, and conducting in his native Hanover and in Salzburg and Cologne. His first artistic home was with the Ensemble Modern, both as a pianist and as a regular conductor. He made his operatic debut in 1987 in Frankfurt with Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro. In 1988 he began his international career when he substituted at the last minute for the premiere of Schreker’s Der ferne Klang at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels. From 1997 to 2005 Metzmacher served as General Music Director of Hamburg Staatsoper, where together with the director Peter Konwitschny he presided over numerous spectacular new productions. He then became Chief Conductor at the Nederlandse Opera Amsterdam for three years, additionally serving from 2007 to 2010 as the head of the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin. In September 2015 he will take on the position of General Director of the Kunstfestspiele Herrenhausen. As a guest conductor Metzmacher has led the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics as well as many other major orchestras in the Old and New Worlds. Highlights of recent years include a new production of  Wagner’s Ring at the Grand Théâtre de Genève and numerous engagements at the Salzburg Festival, where Metzmacher has performed operas by Luigi Nono, Bernd Alois Zimmermann, Harrison Birtwistle, and Franz Schubert; in the summer of 2015 he will conduct Rihm’s Eroberung von Mexico there. In addition he will lead a new production of Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos at the Berlin Staatsoper in June. Metzmacher, who served as “artiste étoile” at LUCERNE FESTIVAL in 2003, is also an accomplished author: in 2005 he published Keine Angst vor neuen Tönen, a plea for pioneering composers of modernism, and, in 2009,  Vorhang auf! Oper entdecken und erleben.

LUCERNE FESTIVAL debut on 24 August 2001 with Luigi Nono’s Prometeo.

March 2015