Michael Schønwandt Conductor

Season 24/25 Artist

Born in Copenhagen in 1953, Michael Schønwandt studied piano, theory and composition before turning to conducting. He continued his studies in London at the Royal Academy of Music. In 1979, he was appointed permanent conductor of the Royal Copenhagen Opera. From 2015 to 2024, he is Principal Conductor of the Orchestre national de Montpellier. In 2021, he was appointed Music Director of the Orchestre Français des Jeunes. In 2022, he is appointed Principal Guest Conductor of the Orchestre National de Belgique. Michael Schønwandt has also held the positions of Music Director of the Royal Copenhagen Opera and the Royal Danish Orchestra, Music Director of the Berliner Sinfonie-Orchester, Principal Guest Conductor of La Monnaie de Bruxelles, Principal Guest Conductor of the Danish Radio Orchestra.

He has conducted numerous productions at the Royal Opera House in London, La Monnaie in Brussels, the Vienna Staatsoper, the Opéra national de Paris, as well as in Nice, Stuttgart, Cologne, Madrid and Tel Aviv, in productions such as Alceste, Don Giovanni, Les Noces de Figaro, L'Enlèvement au sérail, Idomeneo, Fidelio, Salome, Macbeth, Otello, Turandot, Le Vaisseau fantôme, Parsifal, Tannhäuser, Tristan et Isolde, Pelléas et Mélisande, Turandot, Wozzeck. He conducted Les Maîtres chanteurs de Nuremberg at the Bayreuth Festival.

On the symphonic front, he conducts the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre national de France, Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France, Orchestres de Bordeaux, Lyon, Nice, Toulouse, Monte-Carlo, Budapest, Stockholm, Oslo, Rome, Graz and Zurich.

Opéra national de Paris: Alceste, 1985; Salome, 1986; Macbeth, 1987; Elektra, 1992; La Petite Renarde rusée, 2010; Lulu, 2011; Così fan tutte, 2013; Ariane à Naxos, 2015; Wozzeck, 2017