Kirill Petrenko has been chief conductor and artistic director of the Berliner Philharmoniker since the 2019/20 season. Born in Omsk in Siberia, he received his training first in his hometown and later in Austria. He established his conducting career in opera with positions at the Staatstheater Meiningen and the Komische Oper Berlin.

From 2013 to 2020, Kirill Petrenko was general music director of Bayerische Staatsoper. He has also made guest appearances at the world’s leading opera houses, including Wiener Staatsoper, Covent Garden in London, the Opéra national in Paris, the Metropolitan Opera in New York and at the Bayreuth Festival. Moreover, he has conducted the major international symphony orchestras – in Vienna, Munich, Dresden, Paris, Amsterdam, London, Rome, Chicago, Cleveland and Israel.

Since his debut in 2006, a variety of programmatic themes have emerged in his work together with the Berliner Philharmoniker. These include work on the orchestra’s core Classical Romantic repertoire, such as symphonies by Beethoven, Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Brahms. Unjustly forgotten composers such as Josef Suk and Bernd Alois Zimmermann are another priority for Kirill Petrenko. In opera performances with the Berliner Philharmoniker, Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and Richard Wagners Rheingold have recently attracted attention.