Marko Letonja

Slovenian Conductor MARKO LETONJA (1961) continues a distinguished career as Chief Conductor and General Music Director of the Bremen Philharmonic, a post he assumed in 2018. Celebrated for his particularly large and diverse repertoire on both symphonic and operatic stages, Marko attracts consistent praise for his striking, masterful (Passauer Neue Presse), smart (The Times), and inspired (Bachtrack) musical direction, and for bringing high level vision coupled with highly refined style (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) to his work with orchestras and singers alike. Marko Letonja graduated as a pianist and conductor at the Music Academy of Ljubljana and continued his studies in conducting under Otmar Suitner at the Academy of Music and Theatre Arts in Vienna until 1989. Only two years later he became Music Director of the Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra in Ljubljana, which he conducted from 1991 until 2003. He was Chief Conductor of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg for nine years (2012-2021), a tenure that included collaborations with renowned artists such as Isabelle Faust, Stephen Hough, Emmanuel Tjeknavorian, Nemanja Radulović, and Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, etc. His recording with the orchestra and vocalist Michael Spyres, titled Baritenor, quickly gained critical acclaim and was voted one of the top 10 classical albums of 2021 by The Times, winning the 2022 Gramophone Award for Vocal Album of the Year. Marko was also awarded the Helpmann Award for Best Symphony Orchestra Concert for a concert performance of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde with Nina Stemme and Stuart Skelton. As a guest conductor he has appeared with some of the most prestigious orchestras in the world, including the Vienna Symphony, Munich Philharmonic, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Hamburg Symphony, Salzburg Mozarteum, Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala, the Victoria Orchestra in Melbournei, and the Berlin Radio Symphony. He has previously held further titled positions, including Chief Conductor of the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, and Chief Conductor of Sinfonieorchester Basel and the Theater Basel, where he recorded a complete cycle of symphonies by Felix Weingartner and conducted new productions of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde and Tannhäuser, Weber's Der Freischütz,Verdi's La Traviata and Rigoletto, Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, and Don Giovanni by W. A. Mozart. More recent and forthcoming operatic highlights include a production of Tales of Hoffman at the New National Theatre in Tokyo; a filmed Springtime in Amsterdam, a production of the Dutch National Opera directed by Christoph Loy; and productions of Schreker’s Der Schatzgräber and Ginastera’s Beatrice Cenci at the Opéra National du Rhin in Strasbourg, the latter being the winner of the Grand Prix for Best Opera Production of the Syndicat Professionnel de la Critique in 2019. An avid enthusiast of the music of Wagner, Letonja has also conducted the Ring Cycle at both the Royal Swedish Opera and Teatro Saõ Carlos in Lisbon, as well as productions of Parsifal, Die Walküre, and Götterdämmerung at the Opéra National du Rhin, Strasbourg. He has also toured as a conductor at the Vienna State Opera (Queen of Spades and Tales of Hoffman), the Grand Théâtre of Geneva (Massenet's Manon and Kerubini's Medea), the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome (Gounod's Roméo et Juliette), the Semperoper in Dresden (Verdi’s Nabucco), Teatro alla Scala in Milan (Il dissoluto assolto by José Samarago in combination with Hindemith’s Sancta Susanna; Janacek's The Makropulos Case as well as Tales of Hoffman), the Staatsoper Berlin (Madama Butterfly), the Deutsche Oper Berlin (Verdi's La Traviata), the Opéra National du Rhin (Walküre, Götterdämmerung, Der Fliegender Holländer by Wagner, The Makropulos Case, Queen of Spades), and at the Teatro Lirico in Cagliari (Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana, I Pagliacci by Leoncavallo, and Der Fliegende Holländer).