Alan Gilbert has
been named music director of Santa Fe Opera, the company announced
Tuesday.
Gilbert will be the influential summer festival's first music director. Founder John Crosby, who died in December, was general director until 2000, when he was succeeded by Richard Gaddes.
Gaddes said in a statement that Santa Fe Opera has been pleased with Gilbert's previous appearances there: "We were impressed with the rapport he established with the singers and the opera orchestra, and with the enthusiatic public response to the performances he led."
Gilbert is currently the chief conductor and artistic advisor of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, and a frequent guest conductor with many orchestras. A violinist, he served as assistant concertmaster of the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra in 1993, and conducted his first fully staged opera — a production of Falstaff — in Santa Fe in 2001. He will appear there as music director for the first time in 2004, leading a production of Don Giovanni.
— Ben Mattison
