French conductor Emmanuel Villaume has been The Mrs. Eugene McDermott Music Director of The Dallas Opera since 2013. Formerly Music Director of Spoleto Festival USA (2001-2010) and Chief Conductor of both the Slovenian (2008-2013) and Slovak Philharmonic (2009-2016), he has been the Music Director of the PKF-Prague Philharmonia since 2015.
During TDO’s 2020/2021 Season, Villaume conducted the May 7, 2021, Viva Diva! concert featuring Joyce DiDonato. Among other TDO performances since Villaume’s 1998 debut have been works of Mozart, Bellini, Gounod, Bizet, Saint-Saëns, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Korngold, and Kern; and the much-acclaimed 2016 revival of Jake Heggie’s Moby-Dick.
In addition to the Metropolitan Opera (where he has conducted eight operas since 2004), Villaume has triumphed throughout America leading productions at the major companies of Chicago, San Francisco, Washington, Los Angeles, St. Louis, and Santa Fe.
Villaume is equally successful in opera houses internationally, from London’s Covent Garden and all the major French and German houses to Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu, Venice’s Teatro La Fenice, the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, and the Tokyo Bunka Kaikan. His guest-conducting of symphonic repertoire has been hailed with the leading orchestras of Montreal, Chicago, San Francisco, Houston, Los Angeles, and Boston, as well as those of London, Paris, Munich, Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm, and Tokyo, among many others.