Kirill Petrenko will be the new General Music Director of the Bavarian State Opera. He will assume the position on September 1, 2013 for an initial period of five years as successor to Kent Nagano, who will not be extending his contract beyond 2013.

Arts Minister Wolfgang Heubisch: “With the engagement of Kirill Petrenko we have acquired the services of one of the most popular conductors, world-wide. Only a very few orchestral conductors can measure up to the requirement profile of a General Music Director at the Bavarian State Opera. Petrenko provides all the prerequisites. He is a creative and yet highly precise maestro with a wide ranging repertoire and a wealth of international experience. I am certain that he, as musical director, will successfully continue the outstanding tradition of the Bavarian State Orchestra while concurrently providing new artistic approaches.”

Opera Director Nikolaus Bachler: “With the appointment of Krill Petronko to the post of General Music Director, the Bavarian State Opera sets a sign toward the future. With him, we have placed a still young, yet already experienced and renowned conductor at the top musical position in our house. With his creativity and personality he will add new impulses. His previous work at the Bavarian State Opera and his activities as General Music Director elsewhere make him the ideal man for this house.”

Born in 1972 in the Russuan city of Omsk, Petrenko served from 1999 to 2002 as Germany’s youngest general music director in Meiningen and thereafter worked for five years as General Music Director at the Komische Oper in Berlin. Since July of 2007 Petrenko has been working as a free-lance conductor and has led productions, among other places, at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, London’s Royal Opera House Covent Garden and Vienna’s Theater an der Wien.

Minister Heubisch has presented the new General Music Director on October 6 along with General Director Nikolaus Bachler at Munich’s Nationaltheater.

October 6, 2010