Vasily Petrenko conducts Britten, Ravel & Rimski-Korsakow

Vasily Petrenko is Music Director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, a position he assumed in 2021, and which ignited a partnership that has been praised by audiences and critics worldwide. The same year, he became Conductor Laureate of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra following his hugely acclaimed 15-year tenure as their Chief Conductor from 2006–2021. He is the Associate Conductor of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León, and has also served as Chief Conductor of the European Union Youth Orchestra (2015–2024), Chief Conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra (2013–2020) and Principal Conductor of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain (2009–2013). He stood down as Artistic Director of the State Academic Symphony Orchestra of Russia ‘Evgeny Svetlanov’ in 2022, having been their Principal Guest Conductor from 2016 and Artistic Director from 2020.

He has worked with many of the world’s most prestigious orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, Bavarian Radio Symphony, Leipzig Gewandhaus, London Symphony, London Philharmonic, Philharmonia, Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia (Rome), St Petersburg Philharmonic, Orchestre National de France, Czech Philharmonic and NHK Symphony orchestras, and in North America has led the Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, and the San Francisco, Boston and Chicago Symphony orchestras. He has appeared at the Edinburgh Festival, Grafenegg Festival and BBC Proms. Equally at home in the opera house, and with over 30 operas in his repertoire, Vasily has conducted widely on the operatic stage, including at Glyndebourne Festival Opera, the Opéra National de Paris, Opernhaus Zürich, Bayerische Staatsoper and the Metropolitan Opera, New York.

Highlights of the 2025/26 season include tours with the Royal Philharmonic in Spain and the United States. He makes his debut with the Warsaw Philharmonic, and returns to conduct the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Oslo Philharmonic, Orchestre National de Lyon, Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, Dresden Philharmonic and the Houston Symphony, among others.

Recent highlights as Music Director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra have included wide-ranging touring across major European capitals and festivals, China, Japan and the USA. In London, recent acclaimed performances have included Mahler’s choral symphonies and concerts with Yunchan Lim and Maxim Vengerov at the Royal Albert Hall, performances at the BBC Proms, and the Icons Rediscovered and Lights in the Dark series. In the 2025–26 Season, at the Royal Albert Hall, they will perform three mighty Mahler’s symphonies alongside Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms and Korngold’s Violin Concerto. At the Royal Festival Hall, highlights include Shostakovich’s Symphony No.10, Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie, orchestral music from Wagner’s Parsifal and Scriabin’s Symphony No.3, ‘The Divine Poem’.

Véronique Gens is one of France’s best loved sopranos, enjoying a distinguished career in opera, concert, recitals and recordings: she is recognised as one of the finest interpreters of Mozart and the French repertory.

Véronqiue’s recent and upcoming operatic appearances include: Madame Lidoine Dialogues des Carmélites at the Bayerische Staatsoper and at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, the title role of La Fille de Madame Angot at the Opéra Comique, Giulietta Les Contes d’Hoffmann at the La Fenice, Clitemestre Iphigénie en Aulide at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence and for the Greek National Opera, the title role of Charpentier’s Médée with Les Arts Florissants at the Teatro Real in Madrid.

One of the flagship roles of her career, Donna Elvira in the production of Don Giovanni by Peter Brook conducted by Claudio Abbado at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, brought her worldwide recognition. Her repertory comprises the leading Mozart roles (Contessa Almaviva, Vitellia, Fiordiligi) and the great roles of tragédie lyrique (including Iphigénie en Tauride, Iphigénie en Aulide and Alceste) but also heroines of a later period including: Alice Ford Falstaff; Eva Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg; Madame Lidoine Dialogues des Carmélites and Hanna Glawari Die Lustige Witwe. Véronique Gens also gives numerous concerts and recitals in a wide-ranging repertory all over the world, notably in Paris, Dresden, Berlin, Beijing, Vienna, Prague, London, Tanglewood, Stockholm, Moscow, Geneva and Edinburgh.

She has performed on the world’s foremost operatic stages, among them the Opéra National de Paris, The Royal Opera House Covent Garden, the Wiener Staatsoper, the Bayerische Staatsoper, La Monnaie in Brussels, the Liceu in Barcelona, the Teatro Real in Madrid, Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam and the Aix-en-Provence, Salzburg and Glyndebourne festivals.

In 1999, she was voted Vocal Artist of the Year at the Victoires de la Musique Classique. Her many recordings (more than eighty CDs and DVDs) have received several international prizes: most recently, her album of French mélodies, Néère won a Gramophone Award in 2016, while Visions obtained an International Classical Music Award and an International Opera Award in 2018. Also La Reyne de Chypre by Halévy obtained a Gramophone Award in 2019, in the Opera category – she also named “Artist of the Year” by Gramophone in 2023 and received the Ehrenpreis 2023 from the Schallplattenkritik.

Véronique Gens has been promoted to the rank of Chevalier in the French order of La Légion d’Honneur as well as Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres and Officier de l’Ordre national du Mérite.