Orchester der Berliner Operngruppe & Felix Krieger
Biography Orchester der Berliner Operngruppe & Felix Krieger
The Berliner Operngruppe
was founded in 2010 by the conductor Felix Krieger in order to present operas in Berlin that stand outside the usual opera repertoire and have either never been heard here or have not been heard for many decades. After the first performances in Radialsystem V, the Berliner Operngruppe has been performing in the Konzerthaus Berlin with its project choir and orchestra since 2013. The highly regarded semi-staged productions by the Berliner Operngruppe include the German premiere of Donizetti’s Betly and the Berlin premiere of Verdi’s Stiffelio and Puccini’s Edgar.
In February 2020 the Berliner Operngruppe celebrated its 10th anniversary with this Iris.
Felix Krieger
has made a name for himself as one of the most exciting and versatile German conductors of his generation thanks to several highly acclaimed performances in Berlin´s Konzerthaus. He has started his carreer aged 22 in 1996, when Claudio Abbado named him his assistant conductor at the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra for a 2-years-term. Since than Krieger has conducted maior orchestras in concert, opera and ballet all over the world.
Since 2010 he is artistic director and principal conductor Berliner Operngruppe, together with whom he has given enthusiastically received performances in Konzerthaus Berlin, including the Berlin premieres of Verdi´s Stiffelio, Puccini´s Edgar or Mascagni´s Iris. In September 2021 he has conducted the German Premiere of Donizett´s Deux Hommes et une femme and in 2022 a double bill with Mascagni´s Zanetto and Wolf-Ferrari´s Il segreto di Susanna. In May 2023 Krieger conducted the highly acclaimed worldpremiere of Donizetti´s Dalinda in Konzerthaus Berlin.
A live-recording of Iris was released by Oehms Classics in March 2021. With this album he got nominated for the prestiguos OPUS KLASSIK AWARD 2021 in the categories “conductor of the year” and “opera recording of the year (19. Century)” as well as for the “Bestenliste der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik” and for the International Classical Music Awards 2022 (ICMA).
Born in Freiburg, Felix Krieger studied conducting, piano and music theory at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg, completing his studies with Carlo Maria Giulini at the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole in Italy. As assistant conductor he has collaborated with Claudio Abbado, Daniele Gatti, Michael Gielen, Philippe Jordan and Seiji Ozawa and has worked for the Salzburg Festival (Wozzeck/Abbado), for the Staatsoper Berlin (Falstaff/Abbado) and for the Bayreuth Festival (Parsifal/Gatti).
He is a regular guest conductor at major international opera houses, such as the Staatsoper Berlin, Semperoper Dresden, the Opéra National de Paris and the Teatro Comunale di Bologna and has conducted many internationally renowned orchestras, including the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the Deutsche Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the Staatskapelle Berlin, the Enescu Philharmonic Bukarest, the Staatskapelle Dresden, the London Sinfonietta, the Münchener Rundfunkorchester, the Orchestre de l’Opéra National de Paris, the Stuttgarter Kammerorchester, the Bach Collegium Stuttgart / Gächinger Kantorei, the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra and the SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg.
On the Shanghai Spring Music Festival in 2002 he conducted leading musicians of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on their first-ever trip to China in cooperation with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra with Mozarts Jupiter-Symphony and Brahms 1. Symphony.
Felix Krieger was musicdirector of the Projeto Musica Orquestral Alemã from 2011-2012, conducting several symphonic concerts of the major German orchestral repertoire from the Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods to the 20th century in and around São Paulo. Also in São Paulo, as a regular conductor of Camerata Aberta, he has given numerous South American premieres of works by major composers such as Stockhausen, Henze, Rihm or Kagel.
Following early engagements in the opera houses of Kassel and Bielefeld, in which he conducted a diverse repertoire (including performances of Cosi fan tutte, Hänsel und Gretel, Il Trovatore, La Cenerentola, Lucia di Lammermoor, Lustige Witwe, Otello, Rusalka, Werther, Zauberflöte and Coppélia), Krieger conducted a successful debut in 2003 with Schumann’s 2nd symphony at the Staatsoper Berlin and was immediately reinvited to conduct Tschaikovsky´s Swan Lake. Since then, he has led the Staatskapelle Berlin on numerous occasions including the premieres of Viktor Ullmann’s Der Kaiser von Atlantis (2012/13), Marc Neikrug’s Through Roses (2013/14) and Stephen Oliver’s Mario and the Magnician (2015/16).
Krieger has been a regular guest conductor at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna. His world premiere of Scannavini’s La Doppia Notte – Aida und Tristan (2013) was followed by new productions of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake (2014), Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (2015), and De Falla’s El Amor Brujo with La Fura dels Baus (2017).
In recent years, he has made successful debuts conducting new productions at the Opéra National de Paris (César Franck’s Psyché, 2014), at the Teatro Verdi in Triest (Mozart´s Il re pastore, 2014), at Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa (Lehar´s Die lustige Witwe, 2015) and at Theater Lübeck (Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte, 2016). In 2018 he has made his debut with Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte at the Semperoper Dresden and has conducted new productions of Verdi’s Don Carlos at the Daegu International Opera Festival in South Korea (2018), the Mexican premiere of Verdi’s Stiffelio at the Opera Bellas Artes in Mexico City (2018) and Mozart´s La Clemenza di Tito in São Paulo (2019).
In 2023/2024 Krieger will conduct new productions of Verdi´s Giovanna d´Arco at Opera de Bellas Artes in Mexico-City, Britten´s A Midsummer Night´s Dream at Korea National Opera in Seoul and Puccini´s Le Villi with Berliner Operngruppe in Konzerthaus Berlin. He will lead the Kiev Symphony Orchestra under patronage of the Berliner Philharmoniker at Philharmonie Berlin.
Highlights of the last season 2022/23 included new productions of Nicolai´s Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor at Brandenburger Theater (in cooperation with the Chorus of Berliner Operngruppe), R. Strauss` Ariadne auf Naxos in São Paulo and the worldpremiere of Donizetti´s recently rediscovered Dalinda with Berliner Operngruppe in Konzerthaus Berlin.
On the Sony Classical label he has recorded the album The Art of Ensemble, works by the Spanish composer Benet Casablancas (*1956) with the London Sinfonietta. The CD was released in 2018.
Felix Krieger has also recently come into the public eye as a composer. His work for large ensemble, Cantus I – Zwischen den Welten (2015), was successfully premiered at the 49th Festival Musica Nova Gilberto Mendes in Brasil in 2015. Here, too, the first performance of Cantus II – “…durch alle Lüfte bricht“ (2017) was given in Autumn 2017 as well as his Duo for Flauto Alto and Doublebass Oh Luft, Du edles Element, führ´hin mein Liedlein behend` (2020). In November 2021, he has conducted the ensemble unitedberlin in the world premiere of his Cantus III – Íthymbos (2020) in Konzerthaus Berlin. His works are published by Universal Edition Wien.
