ARTHUR FAGEN
MEXICO
Music Director of the Atlanta Opera since 2010, Arthur Fagen is one of the most sought-after conductors in both the symphonic and opera fields in Europe, Asia, South America and the United States. He is a frequent guest of the most prestigious opera houses, concert halls and music festivals.
Maestro Fagen's operatic repertoire includes more than seventy-five titles. He has been Principal Conductor in Kassel and Brunswick, General Director of the Flanders Opera in Antwerp and Ghent, Music Director of the Queens Symphony and member of the staff of directors of the Chicago Lyric Opera. From 2002 to 2007 he was Music Director of the Dortmund Philharmonic and the Dortmund Opera. Under his baton, and after performing at the Grosse Festspielhaus in Salzburg, he was invited to tour with this group at the Consertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Palace of Fine Arts in Brussels, Salzburg, Beijing and Shanghai (China). During his tenure he directed new productions of Siegfried, The Twilight of the Gods and the complete Ring of the Nibelung cycle on two occasions.
Maestro Fagen was born in New York, where he began his conducting studies with Laszlo Halasz. He continued his training at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia under the guidance of Max Rudolf and at the Mozarteum in Salzburg with Hans Swarowsky. He was personal assistant to Christoph von Dohnányi at the Frankfurt Opera and James Levine at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. His performances in this field have led him to wield the baton at the state operas of Munich and Berlin, the New York City Opera, the German Opera in Berlin, the Capitol Theater in Toulouse, the Operas in Bordeaux, Frankfurt, Israel, Baltimore, Edmonton, the State Theater of Stuttgart, Festival of Spoleto, the Teatro Colón of Buenos Aires, Teatro Lírico de Cagliari, and from 1998 to 2001 he was a frequent guest at the Vienna State Opera.
In the symphonic concert scene, he has been invited by renowned orchestras such as the Swiss Romanda, Baltimore and Jerusalem Symphonies, Czech Philharmonics, Tokyo Philharmonics, Bergen Philharmonics, Mexico City Philharmonic Orchestras, UNAM Orchestras, various RAI Orchestras in Italy (Turin, Naples, Milan, Rome), from Munich Broadcasting and Holland, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie, just to name a few.
Maestro Fagen directed a new production of Turandot at the Atlanta Opera at the start of the 2007-2008 season to great acclaim and to inaugurate that city's new opera house: The Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center. In subsequent seasons, he stood on the podium with the Israel Symphony, the Buenos Aires Philharmonic, the Sicilian and Rome Symphony, the Holland Sinfonia and conducted Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream during the centenary year of his birth with the Operas. de Nice and Buenos Aires as well as concerts in Spain and Taiwan.
Maestro Fagen's recent engagements have seen him conduct Beethoven's Fidelio in Portland, Philip Glass's Akhnaten, Wagner's The Flying Dutchman, Mozart's Magic Flute and Don Giovanni, Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, Bizet's Carmen, The Italian in Algiers by Rossini and Tosca by Puccini (in Atlanta).
He was guest conductor of the Hannover NDR Orchestra in Braunschweig and at the Schleswig-Holstein Festival, the Winterthur Orchestra in Switzerland as well as various ensembles in Italy, Spain, Poland and South America. For two consecutive years he has directed productions of La traviata, Cavalleria Rusticana and Payasos at the Teatro del Bicentenario in León, Guanajuato (Mexico).
Arthur Fagen was the first winner of the Baltimore Symphony Conductors Competition, as well as the Prize of the Gino Marinuzzi International Conductors Competition in Italy.
He has recorded for RCA/BMG, Bavarian Broadcasting, SFB and WDR from Cologne (Germany). Many of his recordings are available on the Naxos label, such as the cycle of the six Symphonies and all the Piano Concertos by Bohuslav Martinů, orchestral music by Ippolitov-Ivanov, Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies with the Staatskapelle Weimar. His recording of the Martinů Concertos was honored as an "Editor's Choice" by Gramophone magazine in March 2010.
Arthur Fagen is currently Professor of Conducting at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University in the United States.
