The conductor Christian Thielemann is internationally recognized as a specialist in German Romantic repertory. He works with the most prestigious orchestras and opera companies in the world. Since the 2024/25 season he is general music director of the Berlin State Opera. In his second season there he has conducted two cycles of Wagner’s Ring, along with Berg’s Wozzeck and Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier and Die schweigsame Frau. He has also conducted symphonic concerts with repertory including Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem.
From 2012 to 2024 he was principal conductor of the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden. After holding positions at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, and in Gelsenkirchen, Karlsruhe, Hanover and Düsseldorf, he became general music director in Nuremberg in 1988. In 1997 the Berlin-born conductor returned to his home city as general music director of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, before holding the same post from 2004 to 2011 with the Munich Philharmonic. Alongside his principal conductor position in Dresden, he was artistic director of the Salzburg Easter Festival from 2013 to 2022, and he was also music advisor and music director of the Bayreuth Festival.
He maintains close working relationships with the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics, and conducted the Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s Concert in 2019 and 2024. He most recently appeared at the Salzburg Festival in 2024, conducting Richard Strauss’s Capriccio.
He has won many awards for his extensive catalogue of recordings.
In 2003, he was awarded Germany’s Order of Merit, in 2015 he received the Richard Wagner Prize from the Richard Wagner Stiftung Leipzig, and in October 2016 he received the Semperoper Foundation Prize. In 2022, he received the Decoration of Honour of the State of Salzburg and the Wappenmedaille in Gold of the city of Salzburg. In 2023, he was named an honorary member of the Vienna State Opera and received the company’s Ring of Honour. He was named an honorary member of the Vienna Philharmonic and honorary conductor of the Staatskapelle Dresden in 2024. The Free State of Saxony also awarded him with the Saxon Constitutional Medal. He is patron of the Richard-Wagner-Stätten Graupa.
Christian Thielemann is an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Music in London and an honorary professor at the Carl Maria von Weber University of Music in Dresden, and holds honorary doctorates from the University of Music Franz Liszt in Weimar and the Catholic University of Leuven. In autumn 2026 he will become a professor of orchestral conducting at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg.
