JAN LATHAM KOENIG - Conductor

JAN LATHAM-KOENIG, Chief Conductor, Head of the Novaya Opera Artistic Board.Jan Latham-Koenig studied at the Royal College of Music in London and started his career as a pianist. But in 1982, he decided to devote himself wholly to conducting. He performed with all the leading European orchestras. From 1989 to 1992, he was music director of the Orchestra of Porto, which he founded at the request of the Portuguese government.

In 1988, he made a sensational debut as an opera conductor with Macbeth at the Vienna State Opera and became its permanent guest conductor from 1991, giving about one hundred performances. He now regularly conducts in the world’s leading opera houses, including Covent Garden, the Opèra National Paris-Bastille and the operas of Berlin, Hamburg, Rome, Lisbon and Santiago in Chile.

Jan Latham-Koenig was Music Director of both the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg and Opéra National du Rhin from 1997 to 2002. In 2005, he was appointed Music Director at the Teatro Massimo in Palermo. He is the first British conductor to hold such a post at one of the major Italian theatres, though he previously held the position of Principal Guest Conductor of the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma in the 1990’s. Jan Latham-Koenig is greatly in demand as a guest conductor. He has appeared with orchestras world-wide and performs regularly in Italy, including with the orchestras of the Teatro Comunale in Florence, RAI Turin and the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome.

From 2007 to 2010 Jan Latham-Koenig was Music Director at the Teatro Municipal of Santiago in Chile. In different years he enjoyed directorship with the Wrocław Symphony Orchestra in Poland, the “Wratislavia Cantans” International Festival, artistic directorship of the Cantiere Internazionale d’Arte di Montepulciano and of the Young Janacek Philharmonic; he was also Principal Guest Conductor of the Filarmonica del Teatro Regio in Turin. Since 2012, he has been Artistic Director of the Orquesta Filarmónica de la UNAM in Mexico City and since 2013, Artistic Director of the Flanders Symphony Orchestra in Bruges (Belgium). Jan Latham-Koenig started to work with the Novaya Opera Theatre in 2008 when he participated in the production of Wagner’s Lohengrin. In April 2011, he was appointed Chief Conductor of the Novaya Opera Theatre. Since March 2013 he has been acting as the Head of the Artistic Board.

Jan Latham-Koenig is the Music Director of Wagner’s Lohengrin and Tristan und Isolde, Verdi's Il trovatore, Ravel's L'enfant et les sortilèges, Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro/and Strauss’ /Salome. Also, he conducts Verdi’s Nabucco and / Rigoletto/ and Borodin’s Prince Igor. In January 2010, Jan Latham-Koenig conducted Britten’s War Requiem during the 6th Epiphany Week International Festival. In January 2014, he conducted Walton's suites from the incidental music to Laurence Olivier's films Henry V and Hamlet and Mendelssohn's incidental music to Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream during the Epiphany Festival at Novaya Opera. In August 2014, the maestro conducted Britten's The Turn of the Screw (production of the Northern Ireland Opera) during the UK/Russia Year of Culture.

Jan Latham-Koenig has participated in the Novaya Opera's tours in Israel (the Israeli Opera, Tel-Aviv), the UK (English National Opera, London) and Germany (International May Festival in Wiesbaden).