Placido Domingo Announces Kent Nagano as Principal Conductor for Los Angeles Opera.

Business/Entertainment Editors & Music Writers

LOS ANGELES--(ENTERTAINMENT WIRE)--June 8, 2000

Placido Domingo, Artistic Director Designate of the Los Angeles Opera, today announced the appointment of California-born Kent Nagano as Principal Conductor of the company as of July 1, 2001.

It is the first time in its fourteen-year history that the company will have an official post of this importance for a conductor.

Kent Nagano will become Music Director of Berlin's Deutsche Symphonie this September, by which time he will have relinquished his current post as Music Director of England's venerable Halle Orchestra after a tenure of nine years (1991-2000).

At the head of the Lyon Opera in France for more than ten years, Nagano made the Opera National de Lyon one of the foremost opera institutions internationally with a reputation for innovative productions of exceptional quality, with international touring, and with award-winning recordings and films.

There was much recent speculation in Europe that he might accept the music directorship of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, but Nagano silenced the rumors by officially announcing that he had declined the invitation, and continues instead with the necessary arrangements to find the time for the Los Angeles Opera in his future activities.

Aside from his official posts, Nagano continues an active guest-conducting schedule with the foremost international orchestras and opera companies. A Grammy winner, his recordings have won the most prestigious awards in England, Germany, France and Belgium (Gramophone record of the year, Grand Prix du Disque, Diapason d'or, Edison Award, etc.).

Nagano's most recent releases have been acclaimed recordings of Olivier Messiaen's St. Francis of Assisi and Ferruccio Busoni's Doktor Faust, both of which were presented as featured productions of the past two Salzburg Festivals.

Nagano's new recordings due next fall will reflect his first recording collaborations with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and the Deutsche Symphony Orchestra. (Among his earlier guest-conducting appearances were two operas at the Los Angeles Opera: Kurt Weill's The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny and John Adams' Nixon in China.)

"I am tremendously excited about the collaboration with Kent Nagano," said Placido Domingo, "and in the not too distant future I will be able to divulge some of the far-reaching plans we have made between us. I'm also very grateful to him that he was able to organize his tremendously busy schedule in Europe in such a way that he can be in Los Angeles for a good part of the season.

"Originally we discussed his involvement with the company as Music Director, but Kent felt he could not accept the administrative work, which is part of such a post, due to his many previously contracted commitments for the future. Kent is one of the most important figures in today's music world and Los Angeles is fortunate to be the beneficiary of his artistry."

When reached by phone in Paris, where he was working with the Orchestre de Paris, Kent Nagano commented: "Though not a total stranger to Los Angeles Opera, not only having grown up in California but also having guest-conducted two operas early on in its existence, I have enjoyed watching the company grow into one of major stature with an increasingly important international profile.

"When Placido first talked to me last summer about a possible involvement with the company, the plans he outlined were so fascinating and unexpected that I became intrigued about his proposition of a partnership. The intense discussions between us which followed gave birth to a most exciting and unique artistic conception of a company that could exist in the city of Los Angeles and I look forward with great anticipation to being a part of this important operatic vision."

Other than confirming that Kent Nagano will figure prominently in the 2001-2002 Season and in subsequent seasons, Placido Domingo would not divulge any specifics until he will announce the bulk of his future plans not long after he has officially assumed the post of Artistic Director on July 1, 2000.

Editor's note: For additional information on Kent Nagano see attached biography.

Kent Nagano Biography

The prestige of Kent Nagano's career is so great that, despite the fact that he is still Music Director Designate of Berlin's Deutsche Symphonie, he has already made recordings with the orchestra, including Mahler's Third Symphony (Teldec), and has taken it on a lengthy tour of Japan. He will assume the full title of Music Director in the Fall of 2000, at which time he will have given up the Music Directorship of England's Halle Orchestra, a venerable institution which he restored to its former glory days under Sir John Barbirolli during nine years of highly successful concerts at its home in Manchester and through acclaimed international tours and recordings (1991-2000). Because of his belief that one should move on after having left an imprint in a musical institution, he also relinquished recently his post as Music Director of the Opera National de Lyon after a leadership of nine years, during which the company became one of the foremost opera institutions of the international scene (1989-1998).

While devoting most of every year to a wide variety of concerts, tours and recordings with the Opera National de Lyon and the Halle Orchestra, Nagano still found time to fulfill some of the ever-increasing demands to guest-conduct other orchestras, opera companies and festivals, such as the Salzburg Festival. In recent years he has made successful debuts at the Metropolitan Opera (Dialogues of the Carmelites), San Francisco Opera (Milhaud's Christoph Colomb), Opera National de Paris (Messiaen's Saint Francis of Assisi, Berg's Wozzeck, Strauss' Salome and Elektra), La Scala (Salome), Los Angeles Opera (John Adams' Nixon in China and Weill's The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny), as well as with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, Salzburg Festival and many others. He led the world-premiere of John Adams' Death of Klinghoffer in Brussels, and subsequently conducted it in Lyon, Vienna and the U.S. premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. He not only brought the entire Opera National de Lyon to the U.S. for a series of operatic and concert performances in San Francisco (as part of the United Nations 50th anniversary celebration), he later took the company on a tour of Japan, alongside conducting the Halle Orchestra regularly on European tours, at the Salzburg Festival (for a series of St. Francis of Assisi performances) and, in this country, in a number of concerts at the Hollywood Bowl.

His tenure in Lyon was marked not only by many unusual 20th century works, like Busoni's Doktor Faust (an opera which he also conducted with the Vienna Philharmonic at the 1999 Salzburg Festival), but by acclaimed productions of the established repertoire, like Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos and Berlioz's La damnation de Faust, as well as Les contes d'Hoffmann, Carmen, The Magic Flute, The Rake's Progress, Werther, Fidelio, etc. He also oversaw the complete renovation of the opera house in Lyon and the inauguration of a new concert hall for the Halle Orchestra in Manchester. The opening of the renovated opera house in Lyon made world news not only for the restoration itself, but even more so from a musicological standpoint: Nagano gave the world premiere of Debussy's unperformed opera Rodrigue et Chimene.

Nagano has made an astonishing number of recordings that have garnered rave reviews and numerous awards. Aside from many compositions from the standard symphonic repertoire of Ravel, Stravinsky, Debussy, Bartok, Prokofiev, Weill, Saint-Saens, Bruch etc., he has recorded symphonic music by Varese, Milhaud, Britten, Shostakovich, Messaien and several other 20th century masters. In opera he has recorded such standard works as Prokofiev's Love of Three Oranges, Strauss' Salome and his Ariadne auf Naxos, Puccini's La boheme, Massenet's Werther, Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffmann and Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress. But his operatic catalogue also contains some highly unusual works, like Messaien's St Francis of Assisi, John Adam's Death of Klinghoffer, the above mentioned Rodrigue et Chimene by Debussy, Busoni's Turandot and Doktor Faust, Carlisle Floyd's Susannah, the original four-act version of Britten's Billy Budd, Weill's Seven Deadly Sins and the never performed original version of Mahler's Das Klagende Lied. (The majority of these recordings have been for Erato but recently he switched to Teldec which, like Erato, is part of Time/Warner Records. His earlier recordings were for EMI/Virgin.)

For his work he has won three Grammy Awards, in addition to several nominations, the Edison Award, several Gramophone Magazine awards and twice the Grand Prix du Disque. He also was named "Conductor of the Year" by England's International Music Awards and "Officer" in France's Order of Arts and Letters.

The son of Japanese-American Nisei immigrants, Kent Nagano was born on a farm in Morro Bay, California, and was trained in both Japanese and Western traditions. He was playing the piano by the age of four and, by the time he entered high school, he was proficient on the viola and clarinet. He was awarded a bachelor's degree with highest honors in both sociology and music from the University of California at Santa Cruz, which recently honored him with their Alumni Achievement Award. He received a master's degree in music from San Francisco State University and in 1994 received its Alumni Achievement of the Year Award (together with astronaut Sally Ride). While continuing his studies in piano, voice, viola and musicology, he served as assistant to Laszlo Varga and to Sarah Caldwell.

In 1984, Nagano received worldwide recognition after successfully conducting the Boston Symphony in a performance of Mahler's Symphony No. 9 on one day's notice without a rehearsal and without previously having conducted the work. Subsequently he was named one of two co-winners of the first Seaver/NEA Conductors Award, which consisted of a $75,000 cash prize, and which he used to pursue further conducting studies with Seiji Ozawa, Pierre Boulez, Leonard Bernstein, Bernard Haitink and Claudio Abbado.

Since 1978, Kent Nagano has been Music Director and Conductor of the Berkeley Symphony and has elevated that orchestra to national recognition for its performances of the music of Messaien (on several occasions attended by the composer) and for its championing of contemporary music through an acclaimed series of U.S. and West Coast premieres.

Nagano has also served as Music Director of the prestigious Ojai Festival for two consecutive seasons (succeeding Pierre Boulez) and recently returned there for a third season.

In the words of Die Sueddeutsche Zeitung: "In music, Kent Nagano is the man to lead us into the 21st century."