Germany's Staatstheater Meiningen Names New General Music Director

28-year-old Killian Farrell will become the first Irish conductor to hold a GMD position in Germany

The young Irish conductor Killian Farrell has been named as the new General Music Director at the Staatstheater Meiningen, and will take up the role at the beginning of the 2023/24 season. Farrell will succeed Phillipe Bach, who held the position for eleven seasons.

Farrell will be the first Irish General Music Director of a German opera house, and was selected from a competitive field of over 100 candidates. Prior to his appointment in Meiningen, Farrell has held positions at the Theater Bremen and the Staatsoper Stuttgart.

Farrell received his earliest musical education in the Palestrina Choir at Dublin Cathedral, where he sang as a boy. He also made his conducting debut there, leading a performance of Bach's St. John Passion at the age of 17.

He studied piano, organ, conducting, and musicology conjointly at the Dublin Institute of Technology and at Trinity College Dublin. A period in London followed, where he trained as a répétiteur and young artist at the National Opera Studio.

He has attended the Britten-Pears Academy and the Académie du Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, and has held the Tanglewood Music Center Conducting Fellowship, which saw him work with conductors Andris Nelsons and Thomas Adès.

“With Killian Farrell we have succeeded — in a process conducted with great respect — in signing the preferred candidate of the court orchestra and theater management," said Jens Neundorff von Enzberg, the theater's Intendant. "We are very much looking forward to working together and to his musical impulses."