Leo Hussain

Leo Hussain (born 1978 ) is a British conductor who made a name for himself especially as a Mozart interpreter and a connoisseur of the Vienna School.

life and work

Hussain completed his education at Cambridge University and the Royal Academy of Music . He was then able to build close working relationships with well-known conductors such as Sir Simon Rattle , Valery Gergiev , Riccardo Muti and Yannick Nézet-Séguin . He began his operatic career in 2004 as the musical director of the English Touring Opera's spring tours , followed by Glyndebourne on tour and engagements at Opera North . In 2004 he was appointed General Music Director of the Newbury Choral Society . At the Salzburg FestivalHe assisted among others with Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic (with Pelléas et Mélisande ), Gergiev and the Vienna Philharmonic with ( Benvenuto Cellini ), Muti (with Otello and Die Zauberflöte ), and Nézet-Séguin (with Roméo et Juliette ). He also assisted at the Opéra National de Paris and the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence .

In 2009, at the age of only 31, Hussain was appointed music director of the Salzburg State Theater . In the same year he made his debut at the Grand Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels in a new production of Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre , directed by La Fura dels Baus . The orchestra thanked him with a standing ovation , whereupon he was invited back to the house for various new productions and symphony concerts . He subsequently took on conducting with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra , the German Symphony Orchestra Berlin , the BBC Symphony Orchestra , the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg , the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra , the London Sinfonietta , the Frankfurt Opera and the Marinsky Theater in St. Petersburg. His musical direction of Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream at the English National Opera in 2011 earned him high praise from the Financial Times : “Leo Hussain and his orchestra weaved a magical web and made it one of the most stirring and disturbing ENOs - Recent performances. "

At the chief conductor at the Salzburg State Theater, Hussain demonstrated his versatility and conducted his way through music history: at the Salzach, he took over Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni , Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore , Rossini's La Cenerentola and Die Fledermaus von, among others Johann Strauss , Verdi's La traviata and Wagner's Tristan and Isolde , Bergs Wozzeck and Turnages Greek . In the 2011/12 season the conductor made his debut at the State Opera in the Schillertheater Berlin (with Tosca and Aida ), at the Opéra-Comique in Paris (with Les pêcheurs de perles ), and at the Frankfurt Opera (with La vida breve and L ' Heure espagnole ); at the Brussels Grand Théâtre de la Monnaie, he took over a new production of George Enescu's Oedipe .

In the Theater an der Wien Hussain made his debut in the summer of 2012 with Rossini's La donna del lago , took over in 2013 a new production of Berlioz ' Béatrice et Bénédict , 2014, Torsten Fischer -Kompilation the two Gluck's Iphigénie operas and 2017, the new production of Peer Gynt by Werner Egk . This was followed by debuts at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich (with L'elisir d'amore ) and at the Royal Copenhagen Opera (with Falstaff ), as well as at the Santa Fe Opera (with La traviata ).

In the concert sector, Hussain has conducted the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra of Wales , the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra , the La Monnaie Orchestra , the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. He was also on the podium of the NHK Symphony Orchestra , the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra , the German Radio Philharmonic and the Orchester Philharmonique de Luxembourg .

Since the beginning of the 2014/15 season, Hussain has been General Music Director of the Opéra de Rouen Normandie .

Web links

• State Opera Unter den Linden , biography of the conductor
• OperaBase , some dates of the artist

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Short biography Theater an der Wien , accessed on March 13, 2018
2. ↑ Andrew Clark: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Coliseum, London , Financial Times, May 22, 2011