Biography

Music Director of the Atlanta Opera since 2010, Arthur Fagen is in great demand as a conductor of symphony and opera in Europe, Asia, South America, and the United States.  He is a regular guest at the most prestigious opera houses, concert halls, and music festivals at home and abroad.

Mr. Fagen has an opera repertory of more than 90 works. He has served as Principal Conductor in Kassel and Brunswick, as Chief Conductor of the Flanders Opera of Antwerp and Ghent, as Music Director of the Queens Symphony Orchestra and a member of the conducting staff of the Chicago Lyric Opera. In 2002/2007 Mr. Fagen was the Music Director of the Dortmund Philharmonic Orchestra and the Dortmund Opera. Under his leadership and following his successful concerts with the Dortmund Philharmonic at the Grosse Festspielhaus in Salzburg, he was invited to tour with the orchestra through Holland at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Belgium at the Palais de Beaux-Arts in Brussels, and Austria (Salzburg) and China (Beijing and Shanghai). He conducted in that period, among others, new opera productions of Siegfried, Götterdämmerung, and two Ring Cycles.

Mr. Fagen conducted a new production of Turandot at the Atlanta Opera opening the season 2007/2008 with enormous success and inaugurating the new Opera House, the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center. Soon after he conducted the contemporary opera Cold Sassy Tree by Carlisle Floyd. The next seasons included engagements with the Israel Symphony Orchestra, Holland Sinfonia, Buenos Aires Philharmonic, Dortmunder Philharmoniker, Sicily and Rome’s Symphony Orchestras. In addition, he conducted concerts in Spain and in Taiwan, and a new production of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Opera de Nice. 

In the last years, Mr. Fagen conducted in Atlanta Beethoven’s Fidelio, Akhnaten by Philip Glass, Wagner’s Fliegende Hollaender, Mozart’s Magic Flute, Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni and Abduction from the Seraglio, Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, Bizet’s Carmen, Rossini’s L’Italiana in Algeri, Gounod’s Faust and Roméo et Juliette, Puccini’s Tosca, Turandot, Madama Butterfly, and Bohème. He conducted the NDR Hannover in Braunschweig and at the Schleswig-Holstein Festival, the Winterthur Orchestra in Switzerland, and has been invited to conduct concerts in Italy, Spain, Hungary, Germany, Poland, and many countries of South America.

Arthur Fagen was a prizewinner of the “Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Conductors Competition” as well as a prizewinner of the “Gino Marinuzzi International Conductors’ Competition” in Italy. He has recorded for BMG, Bayerischer Rundfunk, SFB and WDR Cologne. Mr. Fagen has a long-term relationship with Naxos label. He has completed the 6 symphonies of Bohuslav Martinu and Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies with the Staatskapelle Weimar. The Naxos recording of Martinu’s Piano Concertos has been awarded an Editor’s Choice of Gramophone Magazine. Bernard Rand’s first recording of the opera Vincent earned outstanding reviews. The Naxos recording of David Diamond’s Symphony n. 6 and Rounds for string orchestra received enthusiastic reviews from international critics. In addition, the Naxos label released in March 2020 another jewel: the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Mr. Fagen performing four pieces by Morton Gould. 

Arthur Fagen’s newest Naxos second recording with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra has been released in June 2020. This project features works by African-American composers William Dawson Levi and Ulysses Kay. The album got high praise in many of the most prestigious magazines and newspapers. “Arthur Fagen conducts each score with incisive authority,” writes Donald Rosenberg on Gramophone Magazine; “Fagen delivers polished performances and gets excellent playing from the Vienna Radio Symphony” published Fanfare; “Arthur Fagen and the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra provide us with another crucial look at this complex, vibrant opus,” says Seth Colter Walls on the New York Times.

Mr. Fagen was born in New York where he began his conducting studies with Laszlo Halasz. Further studies continued at the Curtis Institute under the guidance of Max Rudolf, and both at the Salzburg Mozarteum and with Hans Swarowsky. A former assistant of both Christoph von Dohnanyi (Frankfurt Opera) and James Levine (Metropolitan Opera), Mr. Fagen’s career has been marked by a string of notable appearances: from 1998 to 2001, he appeared regularly as Guest Conductor at the Vienna State Opera; he has conducted opera productions at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Metropolitan Opera, Munich State Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Staatsoper Berlin, New York City Opera, Theatre Capitole de Toulouse, Bordeaux Opera, Frankfurt Opera, Staatstheater Stuttgart, New Israeli Opera, Baltimore Opera, Edmonton Opera, Spoleto Festival, Teatro Colon Buenos Aires, Teatro Lirico di Cagliari, Stadttheater Bozen. On the concert podium, Mr. Fagen has appeared with internationally known orchestras including the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie, the Czech Philharmonic, Munich Radio Orchestra, Tokyo Philharmonic, RAI Orchestras (Torino, Naples, Milano, Roma), the Bergen Philharmonic, Prague Spring Festival, the Dutch Radio Orchestra, Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, to name but a few.

Mr. Fagen is Professor of Orchestral Conducting at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University.

December 2021

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