Simone Young
The Australian conductor Simone Young has been recognized for many years as one of the most important conductors of our time. In 2022, she took up the position of Chief Conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. In the summer of 2024, she made her debut at the Bayreuth Festival, where she will return in 2025. In the 2024/25 season, she will conduct the new production of Kurtág’s Fin de partie at the Vienna State Opera. Following this, she will return to the Opéra de Paris for a revival of Don Carlos and will conduct Salome at the Zurich Opera and Elektra at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden.
In the symphonic field, she will conduct the Berlin Philharmonic, the Filarmonica della Scala, the Orquestra Nacional de España, the Concertgebouw Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Orchestre de Lyon, the Orchestre National de France, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, and the Frankfurt Museum Concerts. From 2005 to the end of the 2014/2015 season, she served as Artistic Director of the Hamburg State Opera and General Music Director of the Hamburg Philharmonic. During this time, she devoted herself intensively to her work in Hamburg, conducting a wide range of premieres and repertoire performances, from Mozart, Verdi, Puccini, Wagner, and Strauss to Hindemith, Britten, and Henze. She achieved great success with world premieres and numerous German premieres at both the Hamburg State Opera and the Hamburg Philharmonic.
From 1998 to 2002, she was Chief Conductor of the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, and from 2001 to 2003, she was Artistic Director of the Australian Opera, leading the opera houses in both Sydney and Melbourne. Early in her career, Simone Young made a name for herself internationally as a conductor of Wagner and Strauss, leading multiple complete cycles of The Ring of the Nibelung at the Vienna State Opera, the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, and in a new production at the Hamburg State Opera. She made her debut at the Vienna State Opera in 1993 to great acclaim and has regularly returned as both a premiere and repertoire conductor.
Her engagements have taken her to the world’s leading opera houses, including the Opéra National de Paris, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Bavarian State Opera, the Zurich Opera, the Berlin State Opera, and the Semperoper Dresden. In 2023, she made her debut at La Scala in Milan with a new production of Peter Grimes.
In addition to her extensive work in opera, Simone Young has also made a name for herself on the concert podium. She has collaborated with leading orchestras such as the Vienna Philharmonic, the Berlin Philharmonic, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Washington Symphony Orchestra, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, the Munich Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the Orchestre de Paris, the Orchestre National de France, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, the Oslo Philharmonic, and various Australian orchestras.
Simone Young is the recipient of several prestigious awards, holds honorary doctorates from the universities of Sydney and Melbourne, and has been honored with the titles Member of the Order of Australia and Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in France, as well as the Goethe Medal. She also received the Brahms Prize from Schleswig-Holstein. In April 2022, she was awarded honorary membership of the Vienna State Opera. Her artistic work is documented through numerous CD and DVD recordings.
Performances with Simone Young