Simone Young
Australian conductor Simone Young is numbered among the most important conductors of our time. Since 2022, she has served as Chief Conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, where she is currently conducting, among other projects, a concert performance cycle of Wagner’s Ring des Nibelungen. In 2024, she made her debut at the Bayreuth Festival with this monumental work and returned in summer 2025 to conduct two further complete cycles.
Following the acclaimed new production of György Kurtág’s Fin de partie at the Vienna State Opera, she will return in autumn 2025 to lead the revival. She will then conduct Wagner’s Lohengrin at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin. Subsequently, she will complete David McVicar’s new Ring des Nibelungen production at La Scala in Milan, conducting Götterdämmerung and the full cycle.
Simone Young also leaves a strong mark in the symphonic repertoire and will conduct in the 25/26 season the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the WDR Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, and, during a U.S. tour, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony, and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra.
From 2005 to 2015, she was Artistic Director of the Hamburg State Opera and General Music Director of the Hamburg Philharmonic, where she conducted an exceptionally broad repertoire ranging from Mozart, Verdi, Puccini, Wagner, and Strauss to Hindemith, Britten, and Henze, as well as numerous world and national premieres. Earlier positions included Chief Conductor of the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra (1998–2002) and Artistic Director of Opera Australia in Sydney and Melbourne (2001–2003).
From the beginning of her career, Simone Young gained international recognition as a leading interpreter of Wagner and Strauss. She conducted full Ring cycles at the Vienna State Opera, the Berlin State Opera, and in a new production at the Hamburg State Opera. Her engagements have taken her to the world’s most prestigious houses, including the Vienna State Opera (debut 1993), the Opéra National de Paris, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Berlin State Opera, the Bavarian State Opera, the Semperoper Dresden, the Zurich Opera, and, for the first time in 2023, to La Scala with a new production of Peter Grimes (directed by Robert Carsen).
In addition to her extensive operatic work, she is in high demand on the concert stage. She has conducted leading orchestras including the Vienna Philharmonic, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Staatskapelle Berlin, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Washington Symphony Orchestra, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, the Munich Philharmonic, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the Orchestre de Paris, the Filarmonica della Scala, the Orchestre National de France, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, the Oslo Philharmonic, and various orchestras in Australia among others.
Simone Young is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, an honorary doctorate from the universities of Sydney and Melbourne, and is a Member of the Order of Australia and Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in France. She has also been awarded the Goethe Medal and the Brahms Prize of Schleswig-Holstein. In April 2022, she was awarded honorary membership of the Vienna State Opera.
Numerous CD and DVD recordings document Simone Young’s artistic achievements.
