Hilary Griffiths
Conductor

Hilary Griffiths is a British conductor now living in Germany.
During the last ten years he has held appointments as General Music Director of the Symphony Orchestra and Opera in Regensburg, Chief Conductor of the State Opera, Prague, Music Director of the Oberhausen Opera, Principal Staff Conductor and Director of the Opera Studio at the Cologne Opera and Director of the Eutin Opera Festival. He now works as a guest conductor throughout Europe, has made several recent visits to the Far East, Australia and South America, and has appeared at the festivals of Edinburgh, Camden, Schwetzingen, Wiesbaden, Gmunden, Prague, Hong Kong and Perth (Australia).

Hilary Griffiths was born in Leamington Spa, England. He was a chorister at King's College, Cambridge and later received an honours degree in mathematics at Trinity College, Oxford. His musical studies continued at the Royal Academy of Music, the London Opera Centre, the Accademia Chigiana in Siena and at the Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi in Milan, where he became a prizewinner at the international conducting competitions of AIDEM in Florence and Marinuzzi in San Remo.

He has conducted more than ninety operas and a very broad repertoire of symphonic works: recent high points included Britten's War Requiem in the Rudolfinum, Prague, Holst's The Planets and Messiaen's Turangalîla-Symphonie in the Audimax, Regensburg, Bruckner 9 in the Regensburg cathedral and Das Lied von der Erde and Dvorák's New World Symphony to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the orchestra of the State Opera, Prague. He conducted a complete cycle of the Beethoven symphonies and concertos in Cologne and has broadcast concerts with the West German Radio Orchestra, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, the BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra, the Orquesta Sinfonica de Bogotá and the Virtuosi di Praga. In 1999 he conducted an extended tour of Spain with the Czech Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra. He has conducted much contemporary music including several world premieres and German premieres, many programmes for children and young people, concerts with music from operettas and musicals, and New Year concerts.

He has performed with many famous singers including Grace Bumbry, Lucia Aliberti, Cecilia Bartoli, Nicolai Gedda, Hermann Prey, Bernd Weikl, Thomas Hampson, Kurt Moll and Giacomo Arragall.

He recently conducted the first modern performances of symphonies by Pokorny (in his own edition) and his own orchestrations of the French songs by Wagner. He has recorded CDs of works by Jommelli and Weber and complete recordings of Tiefland and La Bohème (Leoncavallo). His video of Il Matrimonio segreto is available on RM Arts and his performance of Der Freischütz was televised in 2005 by NDR (North German Television).

For the Tenerife Opera Festival he has conducted Il matrimonio segreto, Entführung, Un ballo in maschera, Rigoletto and Madama Butterfly. Other productions during the last few years included Erwartung for the Prague Spring Festival, Porgy & Bess for the State Opera Istanbul, Tosca, Aida and Zauberflöte at the Cologne Opera and Leoncavallo’s La Bohème at the Prague State Opera where he also conducted a new production of Tiefland in 2003 on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the original production there. In the summer of 2005 he conducted new productions of Cavalleria rusticana, Pagliacci and Der Freischütz at the Eutin Festival. In 2006 he conducted Tosca, Carmen, La Bohème and a new production of I vespri siciliani at the State Opera Prague, Il trovatore and Der Vogelhändler in Eutin, concerts entitled Belcanto in der Oper at the National Theatre, Mannheim and the revival of The Bartered Bride in Kaiserslautern.