Ingo Metzmacher

Ingo Metzmacher is a passionate and committed advocate for the music of the 20th and 21st centuries. His most recent projects include the world premiere of Johannes Maria Staud’s Die Weiden at the Vienna State Opera, a new production of Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District at the Paris Opéra, and the French premiere of Wolfgang Rihm’s Jakob Lenz at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence. In 2019 he conducted the Vienna Philharmonic in the first production of Enescu’s Œdipe to be presented at the Salzburg Festival.

Ingo Metzmacher has made guest appearances with the Cleveland Orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the German Symphony Orchestra Berlin, the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra and Ensemble Modern. In spring 2021 the KunstFestSpiele Herrenhausen took place for the sixth time under his artistic direction.

Highlights of the 2020/21 season included a new production of Walter Braunfels’s Die Vögel at the Bavarian State Opera, a concert for the 40th anniversary of Ensemble Modern at the Alte Oper Frankfurt, and various guest conducting engagements – among them, a streaming project with the Southwest German Radio Symphony Orchestra and Pierrot lunaire at the Wiener Festwochen in a staging by Marlene Monteiro Freitas.

He is a regular guest at major international opera houses such as the Berlin State Opera, the Vienna State Opera, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, La Scala, the Teatro Real in Madrid, the Paris Opéra, and the Zurich Opera House. At the Salzburg Festival, he has conducted new productions of music theatre works by Luigi Nono, Bernd Alois Zimmermann, Harrison Birtwistle and Wolfgang Rihm. He has also made frequent appearances with leading orchestras: the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic, the Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Czech Philharmonic, the Russian National Orchestra, the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic, the Orchestre de Paris and the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

From 1997 to 2005 Ingo Metzmacher was general music director of the Hamburg State Opera. He was subsequently chief conductor at the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam, and chief conductor and artistic director of the German Symphony Orchestra Berlin from 2007 to 2010.

As a pianist, he has appeared in recital with Christine Schäfer, Christian Gerhaher and Matthias Goerne at the Wigmore Hall, the Aspen Music Festival, the Schubertiade in Schwarzenberg and the Salzburg Festival.

His extensive discography includes Karl Amadeus Hartmann’s complete symphonies with the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, the world premiere of Henze’s Ninth Symphony with the Berlin Philharmonic, Olivier Messiaen’s Éclairs sur l’Au-delà… with the Vienna Philharmonic, Pfitzner’s Von deutscher Seele and Humperdinck’s Königskinder with the German Symphony Orchestra Berlin, and live recordings of Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District from the Vienna State Opera and Luigi Nono’s Prometeo from the Salzburg Festival.

Ingo Metzmacher is the author of Keine Angst vor neuen Tönen (2005), a passionate plea for pioneering composers such as Nono, Ives, Messiaen, Schoenberg, Varèse, Stockhausen and Cage. His book Vorhang auf! Oper entdecken und erleben (2009) explains the process behind creating a music theatre production.