Marc Minkowski
Biography Marc Minkowski
Marc Minkowski
Minkowski’s opera career developed rapidly and since 1996 Mozart’s operas have held a favoured place in his musical life: Idomeneo at the Paris Opera, Abduction from the Seraglio and Mitridate at the Salzburg Festival, Le Nozze di Figaro at the Aix-en-Provence festival in Tokyo and Toronto, The Magic Flute in Bochum, Madrid and Paris, and Don Giovanni in Toronto.
French opera is also fundamental to him, and he has performed popular works from this repertoire such as Manon (Monte Carlo), The Tales of Hoffmann (Lausanne, Lyon), Carmen (Paris, Bremen), and Pelléas et Mélisande which, in 2007, he conducted the first performance of this show in Russia (the preparatory work with Olivier Py on this production has been filmed by Philippe Béziat: Le Chant des aveugles, released in March 2009), he conduct. He has also presented Boieldieu’s La Dame Blanche at the Opéra-Comique, Auber’s Le Domino Noir at La Fenice, Massenet’s Cendrillon at Flanders Opera, Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable at the Berlin State Opera, and Offenbach productions with the stage director Laurent Pelly in Paris, Lyon, Geneva and Lausanne, Platée (third time in December 2009 at the Paris Opera in the unforgettable staging of Laurent Pelly).
From 2004 Marc Minkowski has regularly been invited to the Paris Opera where in June 2006 he conducted a new production of Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride which attracted intense critical acclaim, particularly for the contribution of his own orchestra, Les Musiciens du Louvre-Grenoble. In 2007, again with his own orchestra and again by proposing the creation of a “new” sonority on period instruments, he scored a significant triumph in a new production of Carmen which he conducted at the Châtelet Theatre in Paris. Since 2003 he has a special relationship with Zurich Opera, where he has conducted Handel’s Il trionfo del Tempo and Giulio Cesare, Donizetti’s La Favorite and Rameau’s Les Boréades de Rameau as well as Fidelio (2007) and Agrippina (2009). Future seasons will see him conduct Paris Opera, the Châtelet, the Opéra comique, La Monnaie, the Zurich opera as well as the Netherlands opera in Amsterdam.
Amongst the great opera singers with whom he has regularly worked are Cecilia Bartoli, Felicity Lott, Anne-Sophie von Otter, Magdalena Kozena or Mireille Delunsch amongst others. With Les Musiciens du Louvre • Grenoble he has continued to open up and explore the symphonic repertoire, a repertoire which now occupies an increasingly important place in his conducting activities elsewhere as well. In 2006 and 2008 he toured Europe with Les Musiciens du Louvre • Grenoble, presenting the twelve London Symphonies of Haydn, as well as a tour to South America in October 2006 with Mozart’s final two symphonies (40 and 41). In addition to Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn and Brahms, he devotes himself to defending the works of the great French composers such as Berlioz, Bizet, Chausson, Franck, Debussy, Fauré, Roussel, Poulenc, Greif and Lili Boulanger.
Recent guest conducting engagements include the Staatskapelle Dresden, Berlin Philharmonic, the Bavarian Radio Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Orchestre de Paris, the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Deutschs Symphonie Orchester, the National Orchestra of Spain and the Cleveland Orchestra with whom he has a special relationship and who have invited him back for the current season. In 2007 he signed a contract with the French record label Naïve, and a first recording of Bizet’s Arlésienne and extracts from Carmen (released in march 2008), Bach’s Mass in B minor (released in december 2008). His album Tribute to Saint Cecilia registered at MC2 Grenoble in January is published in autumn.
Previously, he made numerous recordings for the Deutsche Grammophon, Erato and EMI-Virgin labels. (Une symphonie imaginaire by Rameau, La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein by Offenbach and Opera proibita with Cecilia Bartoli, Symphonies No. 40 and 41 by Mozart, an album dedicated to the romantic works of Offenbach and a DVD of the Salzburg performances of Mitridate). The 2009/2010 season is rich in important events. In September 2009, Marc Minkowski opens the first season of the Paris Opera under the direction of Nicolas Joel, with a new production of Charles Gounod's Mireille. He directs Les Musiciens du Louvre • Grenoble at the gala concert marking the reopening of the royal Opera of Versailles while pursuing to be the musical director of the Sinfonia Varsovia which he is named in June 2008.
In January 2010, he resumed Idomeneo at the Salzburg Festival in the staging of Olivier Py, and in concert version in Grenoble and in Lyon. He has received invitations with the Orchestra of the Finnish Radio in February 2010 and he will lead a new production of Don Quixote at La Monnaie in May 2010.
In 2004, Marc Minkowski was named Chevalier du Mérite by the French President.
