Biography

Alexander Joel starts his season 2023/2024 with a revival of the David McVicar Production of „La Traviata“ at the Welsh National Opera, and will then return to the Opera Vlaandern for a new semi Concertante version of „Die Fledermaus“. In January and February 2024 he will return to the Staatsoper Hamburg to conduct „Il trittico“ and „Madama Butterfly“, followed by a new production of „La Rondine“ at the Wiener Volksoper, where he ahs been the principle guest conductor since the season 2022/2023, in a staging by Volksoper Artistic Director, Lotte De Beer. At the end of the season, he will conduct a new production of „Die Sache Makropoulos“ at the Opera de Lyon, in a staging by Richard Brunel.

Future engagements for consequent seasons include his return for his 8th Production at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden with "La Traviata", and a revival of "Cosi fan tutte" at the Staatsoper Hamburg, a reinvitation to the opera in Malmö for a new production of "La Boheme", an extensive Japan tour withe the orchestra of the Wiener Volksoper, a revival of "Il Trittico" at the Welsh National Opera, his Debut at the Israel National opera with "Peter Grimes", and "Parsifal" at the opera house in Mannheim.

Alexander Joel is a regular guest at the Royal Opera house Covent Garden since the 2012/2013 season, having conducted Carmen, La traviata and La bohème (twice), Rigoletto and Tosca there since then. Other opera highlights in the last few seasons have included premieres of Madama Butterfly at the Staatsoper Hamburg (available on DVD with Arthaus), Verdi's Macbeth at the Royal Danish Opera, new productions of Rigoletto and Madama Butterfly at the Grand Théâtre de Genève, Faust at the Sächsische Staatsoper Dresden. Furthermore, he is a regular guest since 2001 at houses such as the Bayerische Staatsoper, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Semper Oper Dresden, the Finnish national Opera, then New National Theatre in Toyko, and Den Norske Opera, the Vlaamse opera, the Deutsche Opera am Rhein, the Oper Cologne, the Hamburg Staatsoper, the Teatro Municipale Santiago di Chile, the Boston Lyric opera, the Royal opera Stockholm, the opera in Malmö, the welsh national opera, the english national opera, opera Zürich, the opera in geneva, the Volksoper Wien, the opera de Marseilles.

On the concert platform, he has conducted orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic, the Copenhagen Philharmonic, the Düsseldorf Symphoniker, the Duisburg Philharmoniker, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (after his work with them at the Geneva Opera), the WDR Rundfunkorchester, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre National de Montpellier, Haydn Orchestra of Bolzano, BBC Philharmonic, the RSO Wien.

Alexander Joel held the position of Generalmusikdirektor of the Staatstheater and Staatsorchester Braunschweig from 2007 to 2014 where he conducted most of the symphonic repertoire, with his emphasis being the Mahler Symphonies (Mahler’s Symphony No.1 available on CD at Corvello Classics) and the german/austrian repertoire- Bruckner, Brahms and Beethoven. In the opera field, he specialised in the core German repertoire with operas such as Salome, Lohengrin, Rosenkavalier, Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal. Furthermore he was appointed Principle guest conductor at the Vlaamse opera from the 2016/2017 season to 2018, where he conducted tremendously succesful productions such as Frau ohne Schatten, Don Carlos, Das Wunder der Heliane, Forza del destino, Don Giovanni and Otello, as well as covering a broad Concert repertoire..

Son of a British mother and a German father, Alexander Joel is a dual national who grew up in Vienna and London and was educated in Switzerland. After a brief spell of studying French and English Law at King's College in London, he moved back to Vienna to study piano at the Academy of Music, before completing his conducting studies at the Vienna Conservatory of Music with honours in 1996. He was a prize winner at the European Conducting Competition in Spoleto that same year. After various Kapellmeister positions in Baden, Klagenfurt and the Vienna Volksoper, Joel was First Kapellmeister at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein from 2001 to 2007. He moved back to Vienna in 2018.