Minkowski Marc

Biography

Marc Minkowski’s opera career developed rapidly, and since 1996 Mozart’s operas have held a favoured place in his musical output: Idomeneo at the Paris Opera, Abduction from the Seraglio and Mitridate at the Salzburg Festival, Le Nozze di Figaro at Aix-en-Provence, Tokyo and Toronto, The Magic Flute in Bochum, Madrid and Paris, and Don Giovanni in Toronto. French opera is also one of Minkowski’s fundamental interets, and he has performed popular works from the repertoire such as Manon (Monte Carlo), The Tales of Hoffmann (Lausanne, Lyon), Carmen (Paris, Bremen), and Pelléas et Mélisande (first in Leipzig with the Gewandhaus Orchestra, later with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra at the Opéra-Comique to celebrate the centenary of the work in 2002). 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 the Flanders Opera, Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable at the Berlin State Opera, and Offenbach productions with stage director Laurent Pelly in Paris, Lyon, Geneva and Lausanne.   Since 2004, Marc Minkowski has been regularly invited to the Paris Opera, where in June 2006 he conducted a new production of Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride which attracted considerable critical acclaim, particularly for the contribution of his orchestra, Les Musiciens du Louvre. In 2007, providing the “new” sonority with the period instruments of Les Musiciens du Louvre, he scored a significant triumph in a new production of Carmen which he conducted at the Châtelet in Paris. Since 2003 he has enjoyed a privileged relationship with the Zurich Opera, where he has conducted Handel’s Il trionfo del Tempo and Giulio Cesare, Donizetti’s La Favorite and Rameau’s Les Boréades, as well as Fidelio (2007) and Agrippina (2009). In future seasons Mark Minkowski will conduct at the Paris Opera, the Châtelet, the Opéra Comique, La Monnaie, the Zurich Opera and the Netherlands Opera in Amsterdam. The great opera singers with whom he has worked regularly include Cecilia Bartoli, Felicity Lott, Anne-Sophie von Otter, Magdalena Kozena and Mireille Delunsch.

With Les Musiciens du Louvre, Mark Minkowski has continued to explore and perform the symphonic repertoire, which now occupies an increasingly important place in his guest conducting activities as well. In the Fall of 2006 he toured Europe with Les Musiciens du Louvre, presenting Haydn’s twelve London Symphonies, as well as a tour of South America including Mozart’s Symphonies 40 and 41. In addition to Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn and Brahms, Minkowski devotes himself to programming works of the major French composers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: Berlioz, Bizet, Chausson, Franck, Debussy, Fauré, Roussel, Poulenc, Greif and Lili Boulanger. At the Sacrum Profanum Festival in Cracovie Poland, he recently conducted an all-Gershwin programme as well as a programme entirely devoted to the music of John Adams with Sinfonia Varsovia. Recent guest conducting engagements include the Staatskapelle Dresden, Berlin Philharmonic, Bavarian Radio Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Deutsches Symphonie Orchester, National Orchestra of Spain and Cleveland Orchestra, with whom he has a privileged relationship, and who have invited him to return during for the 2008/09 season.

In 2007 he signed a contract with the French record label Naïve. The first recording, of Bizet’s Arlésienne and extracts from Carmen will be released in 2008, and the Naïve will also be publishing a biography of Marc Minkowski by Serge Martin). Previously, he made numerous recordings for the Deutsche Grammophon, Erato and EMI-Virgin: Rameau: Une Symphonie Imaginaire , Offenbach’s La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein, Cecilia Bartoli’s Opera Proibita, Mozart’s Symphonies 40 and 41, a recording dedicated to the romantic works of Offenbach and a DVD of the Salzburg performance of Mitridate.

Marc Minkowski was appointed Chevalier du Mérite by the President of France in 200?