B i o g r a p h y
British-Cypriot conductor Michael Papadopoulos is an alumnus of the Royal Ballet and Opera’s prestigious Jette Parker Young Artist Programme and a former BBC Music Magazine Rising Star.
Currently Kapellmeister at Vienna’s Volksoper, he has recently conducted performances of West Side Story and Orpheus in der Unterwelt, as well as the Austrian premiere of Follies. This season he conducts performances of Die Zauberflöte, West Side Story, Eine Nacht in Venedig, Kaiser Requiem, Le nozze di Figaro, La clemenza di Tito, Hänsel und Gretel, and Aschenbrödel. He also makes his debut at the Wiener Staatsoper’s NEST theatre, conducting performances of Peter and the Wolf with the company’s youth ballet.
"Under Michael Papadopoulos a virtuoso contingent from the ROH Orchestra injected a sense of apocalyptic terror into one of Weill's finest scores"
Richard Morrison, The Times
In the summer of 2024, he made his Opera Holland Park debut with Acis and Galatea, leading to an invitation to return this summer to conduct a new production of Lucia di Lammermoor. That same year, he made his debut with English Touring Opera, conducting performances of Manon Lescaut and The Rake’s Progress. He has also recently recorded Peter Maxwell Davies’s Eight Songs for a Mad King with baritone Leigh Melrose.
He made his conducting debut at the Royal Ballet and Opera in 2021 with a critically acclaimed production of Kurt Weill’s Die Sieben Todsünden and Mahagonny Songspiel. This was followed in 2022 by a double bill of Mavra and Pierrot Lunaire in the Linbury Theatre with Britten Sinfonia, described in The Times as “immaculately conducted” and resulting in further invitations from the orchestra. He has led several performances from the harpsichord, most recently in a production of Dido and Aeneas at the Ustinov Studio and a double bill of Acis and Galatea and Dido and Aeneas at Waterperry Opera.
"The Britten Sinfonia, under Papadopoulos's clear direction, were impeccable, nuanced, instruments grouping and regrouping to produce a fluid sound world that was as alluring as it was disturbing, offering an ordered, eloquent backdrop to Pierrot's emotional journey"
Jonathan Cross, Opera Magazine
Equally at home in orchestral repertoire, he has received regular invitations from Britten Sinfonia, City of London Sinfonia, and the Oxford Philharmonic. This season, he looks forward to making his debut with Sinfonia Smith Square and The Hermes Experiment, while also returning to conduct the City of London Sinfonia.
As an assistant conductor, he regularly worked at the Royal Ballet and Opera, Wiener Staatsoper, Garsington Opera, Opera North, and Scottish Opera, collaborating with conductors such as Antonio Pappano, Mark Elder, Mark Wigglesworth, Daniele Rustioni, and Harry Bicket. He read music at Trinity College Oxford before continuing his studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the National Opera Studio.
