< Previous: Teodor Currentzis | Next: George Daugherty >
Jonathan Darlington Conductor
Music Director, Duisburg Philharmonic Orchestra
Principal Conductor, Vancouver Opera
"Conductor Jonathan Darlington gives the score a flat-out, hyper-emotional reading in which the great tunes still soar magnificently, but an insistent verismo edge intensifies the overall dramatic contour."
Vancouver Sun, David Gordon Duke, May 2010
Jonathan Darlington is music director of the Duisburg Philharmonic Orchestra and Vancouver Opera. His demand for the highest level of professionalism and precision, infused with genuine enthusiasm, has ever increased the quality and popularity of both orchestras.
His most recent operatic successes include the world première of Manfred Trojahn’s “La Grande Magia” with the Staatkapelle Dresden, Gustave Charpentier’s “Louise” with the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, Strauss’ “Salome” with Vancouver Opera, “Beethoven’s “Fidelio” with the Opera Australia in Sydney, as well as the Robert Lepage directed Stravinsky’s “The Nightingale and Other Short Fables” at the Canadian Opera Company, Toronto. His most recent live recordings include Mahler’s Sixth Symphony, “Pelleas and Mélissande” by Schönberg and Fauré as well as the “Symphonic Ring”, a new arrangement of Richard Wagner’s “Ring des Nibelungen”.
After graduating from Durham University and the Royal Academy of Music, London, Jonathan Darlington began his career as freelance pianist, accompanist and repetiteur. With Radio France he had the chance to work with some of the most outstanding musical personalities of our time; Pierre Boulez, Riccardo Muti and Olivier Messiaen. He made his conducting debut in 1984 at the Parisian Théâtre des Champs Elysées with Francesco Cavalli’s baroque opera “Ormindo”. At the Berlioz Festival Lyon he was assistant to Serge Baudo, and later to John Nelson. In 1990 Myung-Whun Chung engaged Mr. Darlington as deputy to the music director at the Opéra de la Bastille, Paris, where he made his acclaimed debut in 1991 with “Le nozze di Figaro”.
Sensitivity for depth and balance and an infectious dynamism are the hallmarks of Jonathan Darlington’s work. Renowned for vast symphonic and operatic repertoire which ranges from the baroque to the contemporary, with an emphasis on lesser known (contemporary) works outside the European mainstream, he gives regular guest appearances with major orchestras and opera houses the world over. Among numerous orchestras where he is a regular guest are the Orchestre National de France, the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestra Sinfonica del San Carlo di Napoli, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, the National Orchestra of Taiwan, the Warsaw Philharmonic, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre National de Bordeaux-Aquitaine, the English National Opera and Sydney Opera.
Jonathan Darlington holds the distinctions of a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres as well as an Honorary LRAM and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music, London (FRAM).
This is for information only and should not be reproduced. Please see full biography for further details.