2015/16 sees Alexander Joel make debuts with Opéra de Marseille (Manon), Opernhaus Zürich (Turandot) and his North American debut with Boston Lyric Opera (Die Lustige Witwe). He returns to Royal Opera House Covent Garden for his third season there with Carmen having conducted La Traviata and La Bohème in previous seasons. Following his successful debut with Royal Swedish Opera last season, Joel returns there this season for Don Giovanni and Madama Butterfly. At the Vlaamse Opera he returns for a new production of Otello under the stage direction of Michael Thalheimer. Further highlights include Turandot at Deutsche Oper Berlin, as well as La Traviata at the Staatsoper Hamburg and Volksoper Wien.Joel has had a close connection with the Vlaamse Opera in Antwerp for many seasons, and future plans with the house include new productions of Simon Boccanegra and Der Wunder der Heliane, as well as a series of symphonic concerts for the upcoming seasons.A regular guest at the Grand Théâtre de Genève, Joel returned there last season for a new production of Rigoletto. Other highlights in the last few seasons have included Premieres of Madama Butterfly at the Staatsoper Hamburg (available on DVD with Arthaus), Verdi’s Macbeth at the Royal Danish Opera, and Faust at the Sächsische Staatsoper Dresden, as well as regular guest engagements at houses such as the Bayerische Staatsoper, New National Theatre in Toyko, and Den Norske Opera.
On the concert platform, highlights of the next seasons include his symphonic debut with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (after his work with them at the Geneva Opera), and WDR Rundfunkorchester Köln at the Konzerthaus in Dortmund. Other recent orchestral debuts have included concerts with the Theatro Municipal de São Paulo, the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker, the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre National de Montpellier, the Haydn Orchestra of Bolzano, the BBC Philharmonic and the WDR Rundfunkorchester Köln.
Alexander Joel was Generalmusikdirektor of the Staatstheater and Staatsorchester Braunschweig from 2007 to 2014 where he specialised in the German repertoire with operas such as Salome, Lohengrin, Der Rosenkavalier, Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal, as well as covering most of the symphonic repertoire, with his emphasis being the Mahler Symphonies (Mahler’s first Symphony is available on CD from Corvello Classics).
Son of a British mother and a German father, Alexander Joel grew up in Vienna and London and was educated in Switzerland. After a brief spell of studying French and English Law at King’s College in London, he moved back to Vienna to study at the Academy of Music, before completing his conducting studies at the Vienna Conservatory of Music. He was prize-winner at the European Conducting Competition in Spoleto that same year. Joel was First Kapellmeister at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein from 2001 to 2007.
