M° Arthur Fagen Conductor

Since autumn 2010, M° Arthur Fagen is Music Director of the Atlanta Opera. From 2002 to 2006 he was the Music Director of the Dortmund Philharmonic Orchestra and the Dortmund Opera. As a conductor of symphony and opera he is of great demand in Europe, Asia, South America and the United States. Apart from this he teaches conducting at Indiana University in Bloomington.

In October 2007 Mr. Fagen conducted a new production of Turandot at the Atlanta Opera, where he opened the season with enormous success and inaugurated the new Opera House, the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center. Soon after he conducted in Atlanta the contemporary opera Cold Sassy Tree by Carlisle Floyd. In the same month he was appointed  Professor of Music in instrumental conducting at Indiana University Jacobs School of Musik in Bloomington.

Since 2008-09 Mr. Fagen has conducted Beethoven's Fidelio in Portland, Akhnaten by Philip Glass and Wagner's Fliegende Hollaender in Atlanta, as well as a new production of Mozart's Magic Flute. He conducted the NDR Hannover in Braunschweig and at the Schleswig-Holstein Festival, the Winterthur Orchestra in Switzerland, and has been invited to conduct concerts in Italy, Spain, Poland and South America.

With great success M° Fagen conducted three world premieres in the 2010-11 season: Giovanni D'Aquila's opera Alice nel Paese delle Meraviglie at Teatro Massimo di Palermo, Bernard Rands' opera Vincent, and Le Cid by Théodore Gouvy at the Saarland State Theatre Saarbrücken. Repeatedly, he led the Philharmonic Orchestra of Nice, then, among others, the Orquestra Sinfonica de Navarra in Pamplona, and in Uruguay the Orquesta Filarmonica de Montevideo.

Future plans for 2011-12 season include for example engagements at Bolzano Festival Bozen, the conduction of Lucia di Lammermoor and Don Giovanni in Atlanta, as well as Cosi fan tutte and Albert Herring in Bloomington. Furthermore he will lead concerts with Filarmonica Santiago de Chile, Norddeutsche Philharmonie and Boca Symfonia.

Some of his main engagements as conductor in the recent years led him, amongst others, to the Lyric Opera of Chicago for Ghost of Versailles, Don Carlo and for the premiere of Shulamit Ran's Dybbuk, to the Metropolitan Opera New York for Il trovatore, to New York City Opera for La traviata, Fanciulla del west and Martha, to Württembergische State Opera Stuttgart for Tosca, to Spoleto Festivals for The Rake's Progress, New Orleans Opera for Tannhäuser, Le nozze di Figaro, Carmen and Tosca, to Teatro Massimo of Palermo for Alcina, Opera of Bordeaux for Rigoletto, Florentine Opera Milwaukee for Zauberflöte, Barbiere di Siviglia, Nabucco and Carmen, to the Vienna State Opera for La Traviata, La Bohème, Don Carlo, Cavalleria / Pagliacci and Turandot, to Hamburg State Opera for Cavalleria / Pagliacci, Bavarian State Opera Munich for La Bohème, State Opera Berlin for Aida and Cavalleria / Pagliacci, to Teatro Real of Madrid for La Bohème, to Montpellier with Die Sache Makropulous, Vienna State Opera with Macbeth and Cavalleria / Pagliacci, to season opening in Turin with Lear by Aribert Reimann and Nabucco, to Semperoper Dresden and New Israeli Opera Tel Aviv for La traviata and Falstaff. Furthermore in summer 2006 Fagen debuted at Teatro Colon, Buenos Aires, in a new production of Britten's Midsummer Night's Dream and is guest at Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, at Teatro Massimo Palermo, Nürnberger Philharmoniker, Israel Symphony Orchestra, Orquestra Sinfonica del Principado di Asturias, Orchestre Philharmonique de Mulhouse, Holland Symfonia, Portland Opera, Krakow Philharmonic Orchestra and at Orquestra di Navarra.

As a former assistant of both Christoph von Dohnanyi (Frankfurt Opera) and James Levine (Metropolitan Opera), Arthur Fagen's opera repertory includes more than 75 works. He has served as Principal Conductor in Kassel and Brunswick, later on he worked as assistant of GMD Lames Levine at the Metropolitan Opera of New York, followed by engagements as Chief Conductor of Flanders Opera of Antwerp and Ghent.

Regularly Fagen appears on the concert podiums of, among others, the Czech Philharmonic in Prague, the Munich Radio Orchestra, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie, Berliner Sinfoniker, the Philharmonia Hungarica, the RAI Orchestra Turin, the Hamburger Sinfonikern, Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, Deutschen Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Oslo Radio Orchestra, Prague Sympohony Orchestra (FOK), dem ORF-Orchestra Vienna and of Orchestra Siciliana in Palermo.

Arthur Fagen was born in New York where he began his conducting studies with Laszlo Halasz. Further studies continued at the Curtis Institute under the guidance of Max Rudolf, and both at the Salzburg Mozarteum and with Hans Swarowsky. He was first prizewinner of the "Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Conductors Competition" as well as prizewinner of the "Gino Marinuzzi International Conductors' Competition" in Italy.

Numerous recordings have been published so far, e.g. with BMG, Bayerischer Rundfunk, SFB and WDR Cologne. He records regularly for Naxos, for whom he has completed the 6 symphonies of Bohuslav Martinu. The recent Naxos recording of Martinu's Piano Concertos has been awarded an Editor's Choice in the March 2010 issue of Gramophone Magazine.