French conductor March Minkowski is the Artistic Director of Les Musiciens du Louvre and the Ré Majeure Festival, was the General Manager of Opéra national de Bordeaux from 2016 to 2021, the Artistic Director programmed of the Mozartwoche from 2013 to 2017, and was the principal guest conductor for the Kanazawa Ensemble Orchestra in Japan.
Marc Minkowski embarked on orchestral conducting at a very young age and, at the age of 19, when he founded Les Musiciens du Louvre, an ensemble specialising in Baroque music. With Les Musiciens du Louvre, he explored and expanded French repertoire and Handel before delving into Mozart, Rossini, Offenbach, and Wagner.
He is regularly performs in Paris, in productions such as Platée, Idomeneo, The Magic Flute, Ariodante, Giulio Cesare, Iphigénie en Tauride, Mireille, Alceste (Opéra national de Paris); Sémélé, The Marriage of Figaro, Messiah, La Périchole (Théâtre des Champs Élysées); La Belle Hélène, La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein, Carmen, Les Fées (Théâtre du Châtelet); La Dame blanche, Pelléas et Mélisande, La Chauve-Souris, Mârouf by Rabaud, Cendrillon, and Manon by Massenet (Opéra Comique). At the Opéra national de Bordeaux, he has conducted Pelléas et Mélisande, Mârouf, La Vie Parisienne, The Barber of Seville, Manon, Les Contes d’Hoffmann, and Robert le diable by Meyerbeer.
His busy calendar includes performances throughout Europe, including Aix-en-Provence (The Coronation of Poppea, The Marriage of Figaro, The Abduction from the Seraglio, Idomeneo, Don Giovanni, and Il Turco in Italia), Brussels (La Cenerentola, Don Quichotte, Les Huguenots, Le Trouvère), Geneva (Les Huguenots, La Juive), Zurich (Il Trionfo del Tempo, Giulio Cesare, Agrippina, Les Boréades, Fidelio, La Favorite), Venice (Le Domino noir), Teatro alla Scala in Milan (Lucio Silla, L'Enfant et les Sortilèges, and L'Heure espagnole), Liceu de Barcelona (Manon), Valencia (Les Contes d’Hoffmann), Berlin (Robert le Diable, Il Trionfo del Tempo, Mitridate), Salzburg (The Abduction from the Seraglio, Mitridate, Così fan tutte, Lucio Silla), Vienna (Hamlet and Der Fliegende Holländer at the Theater an der Wien, Armide and Alcina at the Staatsoper), Amsterdam (Gounod's Roméo et Juliette, Iphigénie en Aulide and Iphigénie en Tauride, Gounod's Faust), London (Idomeneo, La Traviata, and Don Giovanni at Covent Garden), San Francisco (Don Giovanni), and Moscow (Pelléas et Mélisande). In January 2023, he conducted the Mozart / Da Ponte Trilogy at the Opéra Royal de Versailles in Ivan Alexandre's production, the culmination of a project that began at the Drottningholm Festival in Sweden in 2015, and was also performed at Liceu de Barcelona and the Opéra national de Bordeaux.
In recent years, he has collaborated with various stage directors in the opera world, including Sir Richard Eyre, Klaus Michael Grüber, Vincent Huguet, Laurent Pelly, Olivier Py, Dmitri Tcherniakov, and Krzysztof Warlikowski. As part of the Mozartwoche in Salzburg, he programmed innovative productions, including special presentations of Mozart's sacred repertoire (Davide Penitente and Requiem, presented in an equestrian version in collaboration with Barbabas) and Handel (Messiah, directed by Bob Wilson, later performed at the Grand Théâtre de Genève and Théâtre des Champs-Élysées).
He has also been invited to conduct some of the most renowned American orchestras, including the Cleveland Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, as well as Japanese orchestras like the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra and the Kanazawa Orchestra Ensemble. He has also led performances with Russian orchestras like the Mariinsky Orchestra and the National Youth Symphony Orchestra of Russia, as well as various European orchestras, including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Vienna Philharmonic, Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Mozarteum Orchestra of Salzburg, Berlin Philharmonic, Berlin State Opera Orchestra, German Symphony Orchestra Berlin, Dresden State Orchestra, Bamberg Symphony, Saarland State Orchestra, SWR Symphony Orchestra, Basel Chamber Orchestra, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino Orchestra, National Orchestra of Spain, Prague Philharmonia, Swedish Radio Orchestra, and Finnish Radio Orchestra. Not to mention, he has also worked with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the National Orchestra of the Capitole, and the Orchestra of the Centre-Val de Loire Tours.
During the 2023/24 season, Marc Minkowski returns to the Grand Théâtre de Genève for a new production of Don Carlos and conducts a semi-staged version of Orphée aux Enfers at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg. He returns to the Staatsoper Berlin for three Mozart productions: The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Mitridate with Les Musiciens du Louvre, whom he works with throughout the season performing works by Handel (Alcina at La Scala in Milan, La Resurrezione on a European tour). He also conducts Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus at the Teatro Real in Madrid and at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris. On the concert stage, he will lead the Karajan Academy of the Berliner Philharmonic, the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, the Staatsorchester Braunschweig, the Dresdner Festspielorchester, and the Kanazawa Ensemble Orchestra.