Gustavo Dudamel to Become Paris Opera's New Music Director

His contract begins on August 1, 2021 and will run for six seasons

The Venezuelan conductor will join the Paris Opera and keep his commitment to the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Having served as the music director for the Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar since 1999 and the LA Philharmonic since 2009, Dudamel has globally established himself as one of the world's most prestigious conductors.

Dudamel has also won a number of awards, beginning with his Gramophone Artist of the Year in 2011. Other awards include The City of Toronto Glenn Gould Protégé Prize given to him by Venezuelan conductor, José Antonio Abreu and a Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Performance of his performance of Brahms' Symphony 4.

“Opera has long played a seminal role in my life — from sitting in my youth for untold hours at the feet of my Maestro José Antonio Abreu and my idols in Milan, Berlin and Vienna, to making this beautiful art form a staple in our programming in Los Angeles — and I couldn’t be more overjoyed to have found, in Paris, my spiritual home for opera,” said Maestro Dudamel.

"Over the past ten years, I have had the good fortune to hear him in the Mozart/Da Ponte trilogy at the helm of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, as well as in works by John Adams and more recently in Verdi’s Otello at the Metropolitan Opera in New York and at the Liceu in Barcelona,"  Paris Opera's General Manager Alexander Neef said. "I was won over by his conducting, as were his audiences. In the course of our numerous exchanges, I realized the extent to which he was the one who could share and transmit his love of opera to the widest possible audience."