Omer Meir Wellber

Omer Meir Wellber, who was born in 1981 in Israel, began playing accordion and piano when he was five. He started taking composition lessons at the age of ten, later studying this discipline under Michael Wolpe. From 2000 to 2008 he continued his education with a scholarship from the American-Israel Cultural Foundation at the Jerusalem Academy of Music, where he also acquired his training in conducting. It was during this period that he began conducting the Israeli Sinfonietta, the Israel Chamber Orchestra, and the Jerusalem and Haifa Symphony Orchestras. He made his debuts with New Israeli Opera in Tel Aviv in 2005 and with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in 2007. Wellber was appointed as Daniel Barenboim’s assistant at the Staatsoper Berlin and La Scala in Milan in 2008; he soon went on to conduct the orchestras of both companies himself, also garnering invitations to such other acclaimed stages as the Dresden Semperoper and the Teatro La Fenice in Venice. From 2010 to 2014, Wellber was Music Director at the Palau de les Arts in Valencia, and starting with the 2018-19 season he will become First Guest Conductor at Dresden Semperoper. He was engaged to conduct a Verdi trilogy at the Wiener Festwochen from 2011 to 2013 (Rigoletto, Il trovatore, and La traviata), and he also led a new production of Aida at the Arena di Verona. In 2015 Wellber made his debut with Boito’s Mefistofele at the Bavarian Staatsoper, where he was subsequently engaged for Giordano’s Andrea Chenier (2017) and Verdi’s Les Vêpres siciliennes (2018) as well. In the concert hall, Omer Meir Wellber has worked with such orchestras as the London Philharmonic, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Dresden Staatskapelle, the Bavarian Staatsorchester, and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.

July 2018