Stefan Soltesz


Stefan Soltész is an Austrian conductor of Hungarian origin. From 1997 to 2013 he was artistic director of the Aalto Theatre and Generalmusikdirektor in Essen.

Life

Soltész came to Vienna in 1956, where he became a member of the Wiener Sängerknaben. At the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna he studied conducting with Hans Swarowsky as well as composition and piano.
In 1971 he began his career as Kapellmeister at the Theater an der Wien, followed by engagements as répétiteur and conductor at the Vienna State Opera. and as guest conductor at the Graz Opera followed. During the Salzburg Festival he also worked as a musical assistant to Karl Böhm, Christoph von Dohnányi and Herbert von Karajan.
Soltész held positions as permanent conductor at the Hamburg State Opera. and at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. He worked as general music director at the Staatstheater Braunschweig from 1988 to 1993 and as chief conductor at the Flemish Opera from 1992 to 1997 in Antwerp and Gent.
From 1997 until the end of the 2012/13 season, Soltész was artistic director of the Aalto-Theater in Essen, which was voted "Opera House of the Year" in the critics' survey conducted by the magazine "Opernwelt" in 2008, and until the end of the 2012/2013 season he was General Music Director of the Essen Philharmonic, which was selected "Orchestra of the Year" in 2003 and 2008.
Soltész is a regular guest conductor at the Vienna State Opera and the major opera houses in Germany. Further focal points of his work are the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, the Budapest State Opera, the Teatr Wielki in Warsaw, the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow and the Grand Théâtre de Genève. He has also made guest appearances at the Paris Opera and the Zurich Opera House, Het Muziektheater in Amsterdam, the Teatro Massimo Bellini in Catania, at the Bilbao Opera, at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, in Japan, Taiwan, at the Washington and San Francisco Opera, in Covent Garden, as well as at the Festivals in Montpellier, Aix-en-Provence and Savonlinna, the Baden-Baden Whitsun Festival, anima mundi in Pisa, the Tongyeong Festival and the Glyndebourne Festival.
Soltész has conducted symphony concerts and radio recordings in Munich, Hamburg, Hannover, Dresden, Berlin, Saarbrücken, Bremen, Wiesbaden, Heidelberg, Vienna, Rome, Catania, Turin, Milan, Genoa, Verona, Trieste, Basel, Bern, Paris, Moscow, Taipei, Nagoya and Budapest.
His CD recordings include operas by Giacomo Puccini, Giuseppe Gazzaniga and Alexander von Zemlinsky as well as arias and songs with Grace Bumbry, Lucia Popp and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. His recording of Alban Berg's Lulu suite and Hans Werner Henze's Appassionatamente plus with the Essen Philharmonic Orchestra was nominated for Grammy and ICMA awards.

Awards