Stephanie Childress Conductor

Biography

Franco-British conductor Stephanie Childress won Second Prize at the inaugural La Maestra International Conducting Competition in 2020. Since then, she has conducted the Orchestre de Paris, the Paris Mozart Orchestra, the Orchestre de chambre de Paris, the Orchestre national d’Île-de-France, and the Orchestre national de Montpellier. Across the Atlantic, she has appeared with The Cleveland Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, and the Houston, San Francisco, and San Diego Symphony Orchestras.

Currently Principal Guest Conductor of the Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya, she has led programmes including Poulenc’s Stabat Mater, Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2, and Schumann’s Symphony No. 2. The latter marks the beginning of an exploration of Schumann’s symphonic works, performed throughout the season with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the hr-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt, and the Minnesota Orchestra.

This season, Stephanie Childress makes her debut with the Zurich Chamber Orchestra and the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra in Australia. In June 2026, together with director Tom Morris, she will present a reimagining of Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 at St John’s Smith Square in London.

It was her love of opera that led Stephanie Childress to conducting. She has conducted The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni at Glyndebourne, The Abduction from the Seraglio at the Hamburg State Opera, Missy Mazzoli’s Breaking the Waves at Detroit Opera, and Simon Voseček’s Ogres at the National Theatre Opera in Prague. This season, she will conduct Verdi’s La Traviata for the first time, at the Finnish National Opera. From 2022 to 2023, she served as Conductor-in-Residence at the Paris National Opera Academy, where she worked on new productions of Charles Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette and Thomas Adès’s The Exterminating Angel.

Reflecting her transatlantic presence, Stephanie Childress has held a residency at Villa Albertine, a network dedicated to arts and ideas connecting France and the United States, and she is currently a member of the Franco-British Young Leaders programme.

Immerse in the Paris Opera universe

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