Our conductors 2025/2026

With their magical hand movements and wand-like conductor's batons, they lead the Royal Swedish Opera to wonderful performances, whether it's opera, ballet or concert. Discover the conductors who are gracing the Royal Swedish Opera stage this season!

The conductor's role is as important as the director's when it comes to an opera and as important as the choreographer's when it comes to a ballet. The conductor is involved from the beginning of the artistic process and has a great influence on the design of the work being performed.

As soon as it is decided which opera or ballet will be performed – which happens 2–3 years before the premiere or new premiere – the conductor is chosen. He or she then begins to prepare by studying the opera or ballet's score and becoming intimately familiar with the music, what it contains, what it says and what is interesting to highlight with it.

In this way, the conductor shapes his or her own interpretation of the opera or ballet – he or she creates the musical expression in a performance. The conductor's dialogue with the director or choreographer, who is responsible for the visual expression, is therefore incredibly important. Hence, the conductor is much more than a musician who leads the orchestra during a performance – he or she is the one who determines why the music sounds the way it does, why it feels the way it does.

Alan Gilbert

Alan Gilbert has been Operan’s music director since 2021, and in 2022 the King of Sweden appointed him as Royal Court Kapellmeister. He is also Chief Conductor of the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, a position he took up in 2019 after eight years as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic. The autumn of 2025 will begin with Alan Gilbert conducting the annual free concert at Gustaf Adolfs Torg, which serves as both the closing of the Stockholm Cultural Festival and the start of the Royal Swedish Opera season. Alan will then conduct the Swedish premiere of Rusalka, the new premiere of Die Zauberflöte and a symphonic concert with the Royal Swedish Opera on the Royal Swedish Opera's main stage: A Faust Symphony by Franz Liszt. In January 2026, the Royal Swedish Opera's 500th anniversary year will begin with a pair of grand concerts conducted by Alan Gilbert - including performances of Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 with a large orchestra, choir and soloists on the main stage.

Nir Kabaretti

The Israeli conductor Nir Kabaretti is the Santa Barbara Symphony’s music director. He’s conducted opera at Teatro Real in Madrid, the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino festival in Florence and the opera houses in Tokyo, Israel and Lausanne. After conducting Mats Ek's Juliet & Romeo at the Royal Swedish Opera in 2023 and the premiere of the same choreographer's En kopp kaffe in spring 2025, Kabaretti will return in spring 2026 to conduct the modern classic Juliet & Romeo once again.

Vincenzo Milletarì

Vincenzo Milletarì, from Italy, is a regular visitor to Operan – since 2019 he’s conducted Rigoletto, La Traviata, Carmen, Madama Butterfly, Ariadne auf Naxos and Il barbiere di Siviglia here, as well as the 2022 New Year’s concert. He returned in the 2024/2025 season to conduct the Royal Swedish Orchestra in Puccini's La bohème, an opera he had previously performed at the Gothenburg Opera. Milletarì has also worked at the Royal Opera in Copenhagen, the Norwegian Opera in Oslo and the Bergen Opera, among others – a true Scandinavian lover! Giuseppe Verdi is the composer that Vincenzo Milletarì has devoted himself to the most – he has conducted six different Verdi operas in a total of eleven different productions – but he has never yet performed the master's Aida, a classic that he will finally get to get his teeth into when it is revived again at the Royal Swedish Opera in the 2025/2026 season.

Philippe Béran

The frequently returning Swiss ballet conductor Philippe Béran is a force of reliability and stability to the Royal Swedish Ballet. This maestro conducts both opera and ballet, though the latter is his favourite genre, and he’s worked with dance companies such as New York City Ballet and Paris Opera Ballet. Since 2009 he’s taken the podium at the Royal Swedish Opera for a number of ballets: Coppélia, The Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty, the double bill Dancing Forward, Swan Lake, Giselle and Manon. In the 2025/2026 season, he will return to conduct the season's great ballet classic, Swan Lake.

Tobias Ringborg

Tobias Ringborg is one of the foremost Swedish opera conductors of our time, as well as being a busy solo and ensemble violinist. Unsurprisingly for someone of his talents, his career has taken him to many countries, including the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Germany and Denmark, but the core of his work is in Sweden. His first job at the Royal Swedish Opera was for the 2001 production of La bohème, since when he’s conducted the operas Rigoletto, Tosca, Turandot, Carmen, Il barbiere di Siviglia, Fedora and The Promise (Löftet) and the ballets Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty in much-loved performances on our main stage. In the autumn of 2025, he will take over the baton from Alan Gilbert in Linus Fellbom's production of Le nozze di Figaro and in the spring of 2026, he will take on the revival of Puccini's Turandot. Tobias is also a violinist and is active both as a soloist and chamber musician.

Ewa Strunsińska

The Polish/British musician Ewa Strusińska is the general music director of the Gerhart Hauptmann Theatre Görlitz-Zittau and the chief conductor of the Neue Lausitzer Philharmonie. She’s built up a sizeable opera and ballet repertoire as assistant conductor at Polish National Opera in Warsaw, and has conducted a host of orchestras worldwide – from Wales to Johannesburg to Norrköping. Ewa was at Operan’s orchestral helm for many performances of the ballet Cinderella in 2022 and 2023, and is now returning for another ballet with a languorous score by Prokofiev: Romeo and Juliet, with Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s legendary choreography.

André Callegaro

German-Brazilian conductor and répétiteur André Callegaro is the new conductor in residence of the Royal Swedish Orchestra. As part of his assignment, André will collaborate closely with music director Alan Gilbert as well as all guest conductors, to ensure that each production is realized to its fullest potential. He will assist with the musical preparation, but also conduct numerous opera and ballet performances. During the 2025/2026 season, André will conduct the ballet double bill Lifar/Forsythe, as well as several concerts with the Royal Swedish Orchestra, as a part of the orchestra’s 500 year jubilee in 2026.

Mattias Böhm

Mattias Böhm is engaged at Operan as a repetiteur, but also conducts. A repetiteur is someone who rehearses with the singers at the keyboard, in preparation for rehearsals with orchestra and conductor – a sort of link between conductor and soloists before they meet face to face. The dialogue between repetiteur and conductor is important, as the repetiteur must convey the conductor’s musical vision to the singers. Mattias Böhm’s most recent appearance on the podium was Short Stories III (2022). Prior to that he conducted The Performance (Föreställningen) in 2019 and a number of Young Opera productions: My Brother is Don Juan (Min bror är Don Juan), Dido and Aeneas, The Way Back Home (Vägen hem), When, then? (När då då), Orlando and Julius Caesar. In Cinderella, Mattias Böhm once again leads a chamber ensemble with musicians from the Royal Swedish Orchestra for a new exciting production at the Rotundan stage from the Young Opera section.

Karen Kamensek

Karen Kamensek has a wide artistic range and conducts both classics and works from the 20th and 21st centuries, in both opera houses and concert halls. In the 2024/2025 season, she debuted at the Houston Grand Opera (with La bohème) and at the Semperoper Dresden (Candide), and also made concert debuts with the Baltimore Symphony, Kraków Philharmonic and Edmonton Symphony. She also conducted The Handmaid’s Tale at the San Francisco Opera and Moby Dick at the Metropolitan in New York, among others. Previous highlights of Kamensek’s career include Tosca at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Philip Glass’s operas Akhnaten and Satyagraha at the English National Opera, Akhnaten and Verdi’s Rigoletto at the Metropolitan, Die Zauberflöte at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Leonard Bernstein’s Wonderful Town at the Norwegian Opera & Ballet, and not least the world premiere of Victoria Borisova-Olla’s Dracula at the Royal Swedish Opera. Her recording of Akhnaten from the Metropolitan won a Grammy for best opera recording. In the 2025/2026 season, Karen Kamensek returns to the Royal Swedish Opera to conduct the Swedish premiere of Elena Langer's Figaro gets a divorce.

Anna Handler

The German-Colombian conductor and pianist Anna Handler, raised in Munich, has performed on stages and in concert halls around the world. In the 2025/2026 season, she will take up the position of Kapellmeister at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. She was previously a Dudamel Fellow at the Los Angeles Philharmonic. She has also been appointed assistant conductor at the Boston Symphony Orchestra, debuting in the 2025/2026 season. She has conducted several operas at the Salzburg Festival – Ravel's The Child and the Ghosts in 2023 and Carl Orff's Die Kluge in 2024. She has also conducted orchestras such as the LA Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic and Frankfurt Radio Symphony, and worked with soloists such as Barbara Hannigan and Yo-Yo Ma. Anna Handler makes her debut at the Royal Swedish Opera with the New Year's concert that ends 2025.

Anna-Maria Helsing

Finnish-Swedish Anna-Maria Helsing – born in Södertälje, raised in the Eastern Bothnia region – is chief conductor of both the BBC Concert Orchestra and Vaasa City Orchestra, as well as artistic director of the Rusk Festival in Jakobstad, Finland. In the 2024/2025 season she conducted, among other things, Carwithen's The Men of Sherwood Forest at the BBC Proms and Puccini's Tosca at the Vaasan Oopera. She has previously conducted Turnage's Coraline at Folkoperan, Azarova's Momo at the Copenhagen Opera, Saariaho's Adriana Mater at the Helsinki Opera and Nadia Boulanger's La ville morte at the Gothenburg Opera. In the 2025/2026 season, she will make her debut at the Royal Swedish Opera as conductor for the premiere of Britta Byström's Jordens hjärta (Eatnama váibmu).

David Björkman

David Björkman has conducted over 120 performances at the Royal Swedish Opera since his debut in 2006 with the dance triptych Coulours. In recent years, he has conducted Sweeney Todd, Manon, Short Stories IV and The Snow Queen. David is equally comfortable conducting opera, ballet, musicals, new writing and works for children – he does it all. In the fall of 2026, he will conduct Britta Byström's family opera Jordens hjärta (Eatnama váibmu), and he will also be heard in pre-recorded form together with the Royal Swedish Opera in the "pocket" Young Opera productions Vem där? and Sova vaken.

John Fiore

John Fiore, who was born in New York, has conducted over 100 performances at the Metropolitan, including the premiere of Rusalka in 1993. From 2009 to 2015 he was music director at the Norwegian Opera and before that at the Deutsche Opera am Rhein in Düsseldorf/Duisburg in parallel with being chief conductor of the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker. He has also conducted at, among others, the Bayerische Staatsoper, Semperoper in Dresden, Deutsche Oper in Berlin, the Rome Opera, the Chicago Lyric Opera and the opera houses in San Francisco, Santa Fe and Houston. At the Royal Swedish Opera, Fiore has conducted 80 performances since 2014 when he stepped in as conductor of Andrea Chenier. Since then, he has conducted, among others, Eugen Onegin, Tosca, Soeur Angelica/Gianni Schicchi, Rigoletto and Jenůfa. In the 2025/2026 season he returns to the Opera House to conduct Franz Schreker's late-Romantic gem Der ferne Klang.

Daniel Carter

Daniel Carter from Australia is the music director of the Landestheater Coburg and has been the conductor of the Deutsche Oper Berlin since 2019. In the spring of 2025, he was appointed the new music director of the Deutsches Nationaltheater und Staatskapelle Weimar, effective in the 2024/2025 season. This season, he will also make his debut at the Royal Swedish Opera as the conductor of Madama Butterfly. He conducted another Puccini opera, Turandot, at the Malmö Opera in the 2023/2024 season, but has otherwise been almost exclusively active in Germany for many years. In the 2024/2025 season, he conducted Nixon in China at the Deutsche Oper Berlin and De Vliegende Hollander, Jenůfa and Puccini's Il trittico in Coburg. Puccini is one of the composers that Daniel Carter has conducted the most – including four different productions of La bohème in Berlin, Cologne and Freiburg – but Sofia Adrian Jupither's production of Madama Butterfly is his first for that opera.

Simon Crawford-Phillips

Simon Crawford-Phillips is the Västerås Sinfonietta's chief conductor and artistic advisor. He is also the artistic director of the Change Music Festival. He is both a conductor and pianist and works both within the large symphonic repertoire and in the intimate space of chamber music. He has collaborated with, among others, the English Chamber Orchestra, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the BBC Scottish Symphony, the Hallé Orchestra and St Martin-in-the-Fields as well as the NHK Symphony in Japan. Crawford-Phillips made his debut at the Royal Swedish Opera in 2023 as conductor of Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream. In the spring of 2026 he will return to conduct the revival of the successful ballet Gustavia.

Magnus Fryklund

Magnus Fryklund was born in 1990 in Karlstad. After graduating from the Royal Danish Academy of Music as both a pianist and conductor, he was hired as Young Conductor in Residence for the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra 2017–2019 where he conducted several symphonies and was piano soloist in concerts with repertoire by Bach and Mozart. In 2018–2019 he was also house conductor at Malmö Opera. In 2018–2021 he was engaged at the Opéra Orchestre National de Montpellier, where he conducted Rossini's La cenerentola and Il barbiere di Siviglia, Stravinsky's L'histoire du soldat, Mozart's Requiem and more. At Malmö Opera he has conducted, among other things, Lakmé, Rigoletto, Hansel and Gretel and Le nozze di Figaro. In the 2024/2025 season he conducted Così fan tutte at Malmö Opera in a production from Den Norske Opera & Ballet. He will make his debut at the Royal Swedish Opera in the 2025/2026 season as conductor of the concert on the National Day celebration in Hagaparken.