Hrůša named as ROH conductor
Czech to take over at Covent Garden in autumn 2024
Jakub Hrůša has been named as the new music director of the Royal Opera House. The highly rated Czech conductor will begin in post in 2024, taking over from Antonio Pappano, who has led the way at Covent Garden for 20 years. For the 2024/25 season, Hrůša and Pappano will work in tandem, before Hrůša goes it alone the following year.
Hrůša, 41, is already familiar to many London music-lovers, as he has previously served as a principal guest conductor with the city’s Philharmonia Orchestra. He will also be taking over from someone he himself knows well, as he is currently principal guest conductor at Rome’s Orchestra dell’accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, where Pappano is music director. The post in which Hrůša has had the greatest impact, however, is as chief conductor of the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra since 2016 – his many successes with the esteemed German
‘I realised very quickly that I adored the whole team at Covent Garden’
ensemble include winning and then being shortlisted for BBC Music Magazine awards in 2020 and ’21 respectively.
‘I am thrilled to accept the position, and I feel immensely excited about the future collaboration,’ says Hrůša, who has previously conducted Covent Garden
productions of Bizet’s Carmen and, earlier this year, Wagner’s Lohengrin. ‘I have been privileged to work on two wonderful Royal Opera House productions as a guest conductor, and the recent Lohengrin was one of the highlights of my artistic life to date. I have always dreamed about a long-term relationship with a house where one can reach the highest standards in opera, and I realised very quickly that I adored the whole team of artists and staff at Covent Garden.’
The Czech conductor will be succeeding a hugely popular figure in Pappano, whose two decades at the Royal Opera House have seen him win admiration not just as a conductor but also as an astute and imaginative programmer and a personable public figure who has done much to promote both the venue itself and opera in general to wider audiences. As well as leaving Covent Garden, he will also be handing over the reins at Santa Cecilia when he succeeds Simon Rattle as chief conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra in 2024.
… years after being stolen from a Polish museum during WWII, the ‘Lauterbach’ Stradivarius violin appears to have been found in France.