Alejo Pérez

A musical feast. In the pit, Alejo Pérez emphasises the smallest details of this demanding and complex score. He chisels the motifs, makes the architecture perfectly legible (...) and takes up the sound material with full hands to make it more than just a casket for the voices: an additional figure that enters into dialogue with them. Diapason Magazine, Anne Ibos-Augé, June 2025 (Wozzeck)

With his keen sense of the complexity of every score, Alejo Pérez translates the musical text into gripping, vivid soundscapes and emotional narratives. Since 2026, the polyglot Argentine has been Principal Conductor of the Orquesta Estable del Teatro Colón – a milestone that grew out of his long-standing artistic connection to the renowned opera house and concert hall in his home city of Buenos Aires. Europe remains his chosen home, and as a highly regarded guest conductor he appears on major stages worldwide, including the Salzburg Festival, the Vienna State Opera and the Semperoper in Dresden.

Highlights of the 2026/27 season include new productions of Die Walküre and Boris Godunov at the Teatro Colón under his baton, his debut at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, and a concert performance of Hans Werner Henze’s opera Gogo no Eiko/Das verratene Meer with the MDR Symphony Orchestra and the Nikikai Opera Company at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg.

Alejo Pérez has been a guest with numerous renowned orchestras, such as Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, SWR Symphony Orchestra, NDR Symphony Orchestra, Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and Ensemble intercontemporain.

In his role as music director of the Flemish Opera, Alejo Pérez has been forming the sonic identity of the Flemish Opera from 2019 to 2025 with titles such as Pelléas et Mélisande, Lohengrin, Don Carlos, Tristan und Isolde, La Clemenza di Tito, Salome (directed by Ersan Mondtag), Wozzeck (Johan Simons) and Parsifal (Susanne Kennedy). Debuts recently led him to the Gothenburg Opera with a new production of Jenufa (directed by Nicola Raab) and to the Bilbao Symphony Orchestra at the Teatro Arriaga in a production of Shostakovich's 14th Symphony directed by Calixto Bieito. At the Grand Théâtre de Genève, he has already collaborated with Calixto Bieito on the trilogy of War and Peace, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and Khovanshchina. 

In addition, engagements have taken him to the Stuttgart Opera (Cherubini’s Medea, The Love for Three Oranges, Werther), the Opéra de Lyon (Pelléas et Mélisande, The Stigmatized, GerMANIA, From the House of the Dead), the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma (La Cenerentola, The Nose, Lulu, The Fiery Angel), Tokyo Nikikai Opera (Frau ohne Schatten, Gogo no Eiko, Der Freischütz), the Adelaide Festival (Le Rossignol), the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Tokyo New National Theatre, Opéra de Bastille, the Cologne, Frankfurt, and Leipzig Operas, Norwegian National Opera, Teatr Wielki Warsaw, La Monnaie de Munt, and Teatro Municipal de Santiago. 

Between 2009 and 2012 Alejo Pérez served as music director of the Teatro Argentino de La Plata, to which he brought a new lease of life with internationally acclaimed performances. From 2010, he was one of the main conductors at the Teatro Real Madrid in the era of Gerard Mortier, closely working with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Madrid for concerts and celebrated productions of Rienzi, Don Giovanni, Death in Venice, Golijov’s Ainadamar, and Rihm’s Die Eroberung von Mexico. 

Alejo Pérez studied both composition and conducting in addition to piano in his native Buenos Aires, and later in Karlsruhe with Peter Eötvös. Formative periods at the start of his conducting career included assisting Peter Eötvös, Michael Gielen, as well as Christoph von Dohnányi at the NDR Symphony Orchestra. In 2019, Alejo Pérez was awarded the Konex Platinum Award for his artistic achievements – one of the highest honours in his home country Argentina. 

2026/27 season

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