Ivor Bolton is one of the most respected conductors of Baroque and Classical repertory, although his musical activities extend well beyond this. He has recorded a much-acclaimed series of Bruckner symphonies with the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, whose chief conductor he was for 12 years. At the Teatro Real in Madrid, where he has been music director since 2015, his appearances have included a production of Britten’s Billy Budd that received an award from Opernwelt. Since 2016 Ivor Bolton has been chief conductor of the Basel Symphony Orchestra. He is also honorary conductor of the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, with which ensemble he can regularly be heard at the Salzburg Festival and on tour. In addition, he is chief conductor of the Dresden Festival Orchestra.
He has a long-term working partnership with the Bavarian State Opera, where he has conducted several new productions since 1994, most notably of works by Monteverdi, Handel and Mozart. He has received the Bavarian Theatre Prize for his work in Munich.
Ivor Bolton was the music director of English Touring Opera and of Glyndebourne Touring Opera, and was also chief conductor of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. He makes regular guest appearances at the Teatro del Maggio Musicale in Florence, the Paris Opéra, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, the English National Opera and at the opera houses of Bologna, Brussels, Amsterdam, Lisbon, Sydney, Berlin, Hamburg and Genoa. He has appeared at the BBC Proms and at New York’s Lincoln Center, and given concerts with the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra.
Highlights of the 2024/25 season included Theodora and Mitridate, re di Ponto at the Teatro Real and Le nozze di Figaro at the Vienna State Opera alongside his activities in Basel and Dresden. He also gave concerts with the Gürzenich Orchestra in Cologne, the Tonkunstler Orchestra of Lower Austria, the Belgian National Orchestra and the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, and at the Teatro Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the Teatro La Fenice and the Royal Danish Opera, and returned to perform at the Mozartwoche. In June 2023, he was made a Commander of the British Empire in the King‘s Birthday Honours for his exceptional services to music.
