Ralf Weikert

Ralf Weikert (born November 10, 1940 in Sankt Florian , Austria ) is an Austrian conductor primarily of classical operas .

Live and act

Ralf Weikert began his musical training at the Bruckner Conservatory in Linz and then studied conducting with Hans Swarowsky at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna .

Since 1971 he has been permanent conductor of the Salzburg Festival , the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence and the Bregenz Festival . In 1974 he made guest appearances at the Vienna State Opera and in 1975 at the Hamburg State Opera . Until 1977 he was musical director at the Bonn Theater and then deputy general music director at the Frankfurt Opera . In 1979 Weikert conducted at the Deutsche Oper Berlin and in 1981 at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. In the same year he became chief conductor of the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra .

From 1983 to 1992 Ralf Weikert was music director at the Zurich Opera House . Since then he has been working as a freelance conductor. He has guest conductors at the Metropolitan Opera New York, the Arena of Verona (both 1987), the San Francisco Opera (1997), the Royal Stockholm Opera and other theaters in Europe, America and Japan.

In the 2002/2003 season he made guest appearances at the opera houses of Santiago de Chile, Hamburg, Munich and Vienna and at the Finnish National Opera in Helsinki . Since 2006 he has been musical director of the Richard Wagner Festival in Wels , where he conducted Parsifal and Der Fliegende Holländer in 2006 , Parsifal and Lohengrin in 2009 and Parsifal and Tristan und Isolde in 2010 .

In the 2007/2008 season, Ralf Weikert conducted Lucia di Lammermoor ( Gaetano Donizetti ) and The Barber of Seville ( Gioachino Rossini ) and Die Fledermaus ( Johann Strauss ) at the Zurich Opera House and Ariadne on Naxos in Tokyo.

Since 2008 he has held a professorship for conducting at the Lucerne School of Music .

In addition to conducting operas, Ralf Weikert has also given orchestral concerts in, among others, Amsterdam, Athens, Bremen, Hanover, Helsinki, Kiel, Copenhagen, Ljubljana, Munich, Prague, Stuttgart, Valencia and Zurich. He directed several recordings and videos, as well as radio and television productions.

Awards

• 1965: 1st prize at the Nikolai Malko competition in Copenhagen
• 1966: Mozart Interpretation Prize from the Austrian Minister of Education
• 1975: “Dr. Karl Böhm Prize for Young Austrian Conductors ”, which was presented to him personally by the conductor Karl Böhm
• 2000: Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art, 1st class

Discography

• Tancredi by Gioachino Rossini, libretto Gaetano Rossi. 3 records in cassette. CBS, Frankfurt am Main 1985.
• Il barbiere di Siviglia by Gioachino Rossini, libretto Cesare Sterbini. 2 optical disks in cassette. Polygram, Hamburg 1991.
• The romantic tenor - Francisco Araiza . 1 CD. BMG Ariola, Hamburg 1992.
• L 'italiana in Algeri by Gioachino Rossini, libretto Angelo Anelli, 1 VHS cassette, BMG Ariola, Hamburg 1993.
• Arias by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart . 1 CD. EMI Electrola, Cologne 1993.
• Concert arias 1972–1983 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. 1 CD. 1995.
• Deon van der Walt - portrait. 1 CD. BMG Ariola, Hamburg, Munich 1999.
• The dead eyes of Eugen d'Albert . 2 CD. Cpo, Georgsmarienhütte 2000.
• Overtures by Gioachino Rossini. 1 CD. Sony Music Entertainment, Frankfurt am Main 2001.

literature

• Ingrid Bigler-Marschall: Ralf Weikert . In: Andreas Kotte (Ed.): Theater Lexikon der Schweiz . Volume 3, Chronos, Zurich 2005, ISBN 3-0340-0715-9 , p. 2063 f.

Web links

• Works by and about Ralf Weikert in the catalog of the German National Library
• Ralf Weikert on rbartists.at