UGA Opera Theatre warmly welcomes guest artist Maestro Hilary Griffiths as conductor for Mozart's masterwork, Don Giovanni, coming to the UGA Fine Arts Theatre on February 10th, 11th, and 12th, 2017. Maestro Griffiths is a British conductor living in Germany. During the last twenty years he has held appointments as General Music Director of the city of Regensburg, Music Director of the City of Oberhausen, Chief Conductor of the Prague State Opera, Principal Conductor at the Cologne Opera, where he conducted over 300 performances, Music Director of the Eutin Opera Festival and Professor at the Mannheim University of Music. He works as a guest conductor throughout Europe, has made several recent visits to the Far East, Australia and South America, and has appeared at the festivals of Edinburgh, Camden, Schwetzingen, Wiesbaden, Würzburg, Gmunden, Prague, Litomyšl, Miškolc, Tenerife, Hong Kong and Perth (Australia). From 2009 to 2012 he was also Chief Conductor of the Opera of Wuppertal. Hilary Griffiths was born in Leamington Spa. He was a chorister at King’s College, Cambridge and later took a degree in mathematics at Trinity College, Oxford. After postgraduate work at the Royal Academy of Music in London and at the London Opera Centre he completed his studies at the Conservatorio G. Verdi in Milan. After winning prizes at the Marinuzzi competition in San Remo and the IADEM competition in Florence he moved to Germany. His repertoire of more than 100 operas includes the complete middle and late Verdi and all the regularly performed operas of Mozart, Rossini and Puccini. He has also specialised in the German repertoire (Wagner, Strauss, d’Albert, Zemlinsky, Berg, Schoenberg, Henze) and in the Czech repertoire (Dvořák, Smetana, Janáček, Martinů). He conducted the first European performances of three operas by the Scottish composer Thea Musgrave, the world premieres of Das Gauklermärchen by Gerhard Konzelmann and the ballet Lulu (Nino Rota) at the Cologne Opera House, and of La porta della legge (Salvatore Sciarrino) in 2009 at Wuppertal, with which he made his U.S. debut in July 2010 at the Lincoln Center Festival in New York. At the State Opera, Prague, he has conducted more than 250 performances of 25 different operas. Among his twelve premieres there were La finta giardiniera, Eine florentinische Tragödie and Der Zwerg (Zemlisky), Salome, Erwartung, Cavalleria & Pagliacci, the first Czech performance of Death in Venice, and, most recently Tannhäuser. He has also been a regular guest at the Tenerife Opera Festival and for the Colombian Opera in Bogotá. He has conducted Don Giovanni with the Prague State Opera, at the Perth International Festival (Australia), at the State Opera, Hannover and at the City Theater, Regensburg He conducted the first modern performances of symphonies by Pokorny (in his own edition) and his own orchestrations of the French songs by Wagner. He has recorded CDs of works by Jommelli and Weber and complete recordings of Tiefland, La Bohème (Leoncavallo) and I vespri siciliani. His DVD of Il matrimonio segreto is available on Euro Arts, his performance of Der Freischütz was televised by NDR (North German Television) and his DVD of Bluthochzeit (Fortner) was recently released on the WERGO label. In 2017 he conducts Nabucco and Rigoletto in Prague, makes his debut with English National Opera (The Barber of Seville) and conducts Otello at the Teatro Colón, Bogotá. You will not want to miss Maestro Griffiths as he brings this Mozart opera to life at UGA. Grab your tickets and join the conversation! |