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    Serge Dorny

    Serge Dorny
    Serge Dorny

    Serge Dorny was born in Wevelgem in Belgium. He began his theatre career in the dramaturge team under Gerard Mortier at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels, moving from here to the Festival of Flanders, where was appointed Artistic Director in 1987. He revitalised the festival programme with a new repertoire and an innovative offering of baroque and contemporary, invited big, significant orchestras and engaged a series of conductors starting out on their careers, among them Iván Fischer, Valery Gergiev, Simon Rattle and Esa-Pekka Salonen, for example.

    He was appointed General Director and Artistic Director of the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 1996, where he corrected the financial situation and re-established the orchestra’s artistic excellence. Kurt Masur was made Principal Conductor and Vladimir Jurowski was appointed Principal Guest Conductor, and the cooperation with Bernard Haitink, Mariss Jansons and Wolfgang Sawallisch was intensified.

    Serge Dorny has pursued an innovative artistic policy since his appointment as General Director of the Opéra national de Lyon in 2003. His bills has combined major works of the repertoire with lesser-known operas, developed thematic festivals and afforded the music of the 20th century and contemporary works a truly special significance. He has invited outstanding conductors such as William Christie, Lothar Koenigs, Stefano Montanari, Kazushi Ono, Kirill Petrenko, Jérémie Rhorer and Daniele Rustioni, recruited film and theatre directors such as Christophe Honoré, David Marton and Wajdi Mouawad for the opera, and established a continuous cooperation with renowned stage artistes such as Romeo Castellucci, Robert Lepage, La Fura dels Baus (Àlex Ollé), Laurent Pelly, Olivier Py and Dmitri Tcherniakov.

    His initiative to make the opera house’s artistic offering accessible to audiences that previously had very few points of contact with musical theatre, and to bring them closer with special activities, such as the regular art and culture programme, now enjoys international renown here.

    In 2017, the Opéra national de Lyon was named Opera House of the Year by the British press’s International Opera Awards and also declared Opera House of the Year with the “Opernwelt” specialist opera journal’s critics’ vote.

    Gabriela Lena Frank

    Gabriela Lena Frank

    Currently serving as Composer-in-Residence with the storied Philadelphia Orchestra and included in the Washington Post’s list of the 35 most significant women composers in history, identity has always been at the center of composer/pianist Gabriela Lena Frank’s music. Born in Berkeley, California (September, 1972), to a mother of mixed Peruvian/Chinese ancestry and a father of Lithuanian/Jewish descent, Gabriela explores her multicultural American heritage through her compositions.

    In 2017, Gabriela founded the award-winning Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music, a non-profit training institution held on her two rural properties in Boonville, CA for emerging composers from a vast array of demographics and aesthetics.

    Louis Langrée

    Louis Langrée
    Louis Langrée

    Louis Langrée is celebrating his final season with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, where he has been music director since 2013; at the conclusion of the season, he will become music director laureate. He continues as director of Théâtre National de l’Opéra-Comique in Paris, an appointment that began in November 2021. He ended his 20-year tenure as music director of the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center in the summer of 2023. Known for imaginative programming, Maestro Langrée began his Cincinnati tenure with Jennifer Higdon’s On a Wire with Eighth Blackbird; Copland’s A Lincoln Portrait, narrated by Dr. Maya Angelou; and Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Two of his Cincinnati recordings were Grammy-nominated for Best Orchestral Performance: Transatlantic, with works by Varèse, Gershwin, and Stravinsky; and Concertos for Orchestra, featuring world premieres by Sebastian Currier, Thierry Escaich, and Zhou Tian. His Pelléas et Mélisande trilogy contrasted settings by Fauré, Debussy, and Schoenberg. His multi-season Beethoven Revolution cycle has paired the symphonies with world premieres and 20th-century masterworks, as well as recreation of Beethoven’s legendary 1808 Akademie concert. By the time Maestro Langrée ends his tenure with CSO, he and the CSO will have commissioned 45 new orchestral works and he will have conducted 31 premieres from a wide range of composers, including the world premiere of Christopher Rouse’s Symphony No. 6, the composer’s final opus. Maestro Langrée has conducted more than 200 performances and concerts at the Mostly Mozart Festival, Metropolitan Opera, New York Philharmonic, and on the Great Performers series, and has also conducted at the Vienna Staatsoper, La Scala, Royal Opera Covent Garden, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and Bavarian Staatsoper, and at festivals including Glyndebourne, Aix-en-Provence, BBC Proms, Edinburgh International, and the Hong Kong Arts Festival. A native of Alsace, France, Maestro Langrée is a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur and Officier des Arts et des Lettres.

    Jiannan Cheng

    Jiannan Cheng
    Jiannan Cheng

    Jiannan Cheng is the 2nd Prize winner of the 2024 Romania Orchestra’s Conducting Competition, a finalist in the Arthur Nikisch Conducting Competition, and a second prize winner of the 4×4 Competition for Composers and Conductors 2016. Her teachers and mentors have included such world-renowned conductors such as Riccardo Muti, Kurt Masur, and Marcus Bosch. In 2024/25, Cheng will serve as a Cover Conductor with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Other past professional positions include Conducting Fellow of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and the Miami Symphony Orchestra. She studied conducting at the China Conservatory of Music in Beijing, the University of Washington in Seattle, Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and Hochschule für Musik und Theater Munich.

    David Lomelí

    David Lomelí
    David Lomelí

    David Lomelí became the first Latino in US history to occupy a top artistic position at a Level 1 opera company when he was named the Director of Artistic Administration at The Dallas Opera in 2018. In September 2019, he joined the team at the historic Bavarian State Opera in Munich where he took part in casting more than 30 new productions and 50 revival productions for the 2021-2025 seasons, becoming the first Hispanic to hold the position of Head of Casting in a top 5 company in the world. In April 2021, he joined the Santa Fe Opera in a newly created position as Chief Artistic Officer, overseeing the company’s artistic output. After a full calendar year with the company and managing the 2021 and 2022 festival, Santa Fe Opera won “Festival of the Year” at the International Opera Awards in November 2022. During his time with The Dallas Opera, Lomelí was involved in the commissioning and producing of five world premieres and facilitated the debuts of major International and US stars. He is most proud of his work with The Dallas Opera’s Hart Institute for Women Conductors (HIWC), where he and his team recruited over 400 conductors and 50 administrators with applications spanning more than 30 countries. During the pandemic, Lomelí and his team created the TDO Network for The Dallas Opera, which generated millions of views on the company’s social media channels. 

    Before joining TDO, Mr. Lomelí performed as a world-renoned tenor with many top leading companies. He is a recipient of the National Youth Prize in the Arts, presented by the Mexican government, and won first prize in both categories of opera and zarzuela in Plácido Domingo’s 2006 Operalia. Mr. Lomeli is an alumnus of some of the most prestigious training programs for opera artists, including the Domingo-Colburn-Stein Young Artist Program at LA Opera, the Merola Opera Program, and Adler Fellowship at the San Francisco Opera, as well as the International Society of Mexican Art and Values in Mexico City. 

     

    Anna Castro Grinstein

    Anna Castro Grinstein
    Anna Castro Grinstein

    Anna Castro Grinstein hails from Buenos Aires, Argentina. This year, she leads performances of The Barber of Seville as Opera Holland Park’s young artist conductor, and will also return to London to lead Gothic Opera’s production of Donizetti’s rarely performed Maria de Rudenz. She was conducting fellow for the 2023 Aix-en-Provence opera festival, and was selected as a Britten Pears Young Artist. In 2022, she was sponsored by Barbara Hannigan’s initiative Momentum, our future now, and served as artistic director of Colectivo Sonoro Ensemble 2015 to 2020. She earned her Bachelor’s Degree in conducting in Buenos Aires and later pursued a Master’s degree at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg in Germany.