Alejo Pérez

It would be wonderful to attend the performance twice and the second time around only look with one’s ears. The music under the Argentine conductor Alejo Pérez [...] was performed with intensity of the highest order. Jürgen Kesting, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

As a conductor, Alejo Pérez possesses an inherent stylistic awareness and the ability to bring every detail of the most complex score to life. This has consistently secured him a firm place on the international opera and concert scene.

In recent years, the conductor has appeared to great acclaim at the Salzburg Festival, at the Wiener Staatsoper, the Semperoper Dresden, and at Teatro Colón with titles such as Faust, Werther, Katya Kabanova, Parsifal, Der Rosenkavalier and Ariadne auf Naxos. In the 2024/25 season, he will conclude the trilogy of War and Peace, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District and now Khovanshchina at the Grand Théâtre de Genève in collaboration with Calixto Bieito; he will also return to Tokyo Nikikai Opera for a new production of Die Frau ohne Schatten directed by Peter Konwitschny and to the Teatro Municipal de Santiago de Chile for Der Fliegende Holländer staged by Marcelo Lombardero. Symphonic highlights of the season include performances of Mahler's Symphony No. 8 at the Teatro Colón and his debut with the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino.

In his role as music director, Alejo Pérez has been forming the sonic identity of the Flemish Opera since September 2019 - a theatre which has received much international recognition in recent years. There, he made strong appearances in new productions including Pelléas et Mélisande, Lohengrin, Don Carlos, Tristan und Isolde, and La Clemenza di Tito. In the 2024/25 season, he can be seen in Flanders with three masterpieces of opera literature: with new productions of Salome (director: Ersan Mondtag) and Wozzeck (Johan Simons), as well as concert performances of Norma.

Alejo Pérez has been a guest with numerous internationally renowned orchestras, such as Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra,Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, SWR Symphony Orchestra, NDR Symphony Orchestra, Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and Ensemble Intercontemporain. He also enjoys longstanding working relationships with the Stuttgart Opera (Cherubini’s Medea, The Love for Three Oranges, Werther); Opéra de Lyon (Pelléas et Mélisande, The Stigmatized, GerMANIA, From the House of the Dead), and the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma (La Cenerentola, The Nose, Lulu, The Fiery Angel). In addition, engagements have taken him to the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Tokyo New National Theatre, Opéra de Bastille, the Cologne, Frankfurt, and Leipzig Operas, Norwegian National Opera, Teatr Wielki Warsaw, and La Monnaie de Munt.

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.

The polyglot Argentinian 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.

2024/25 season

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Repertoire

Opera

T. Adès

Powder her face

L. v. Beethoven

Fidelio

A. Berg

Lulu

Wozzeck

H. Berlioz

La damnation de Faust

G. Bizet

Carmen

B. Britten

Death in Venice

L. Cherubini

Medea

P. Eötvös

Angels in America

Lady Sarashina

Of Love and other Demons

C. Debussy

Pelléas et Mélisande

P. Dessau

Deutsches Miserere

P. Dusapin

Medeamaterial

C.-W. Gluck

Iphigénie en Tauride

PROGRAMME SUGGESTIONS

Haydn: Symphony No. 22 in E-flat major

Stravinsky: Violin Concerto in D major

Sibelius: Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 43

Mozart: Masonic Funeral Music in C minor, K. 477

Strauss: Four Last Songs

Kurtág: Stele, Op. 33

Mozart: Symphony No. 41 in C major, K. 551 ‘Jupiter’

Mahler: Rückert-Lieder

Debussy: La damoiselle élue

Schönberg: Five Pieces for Orchestra Op. 16

Scriabin: Symphony No. 4, Op. 54 ‘Le Poème de l’Extase’

Schreker: ‘The Stigmatised’ – Prelude to Act I

Berg: Lulu Suite

Gounod: Ballet Music from ‘Faust’

Strauss: Symphonic Fantasy on ‘Die Frau ohne Schatten’

Janáček: Taras Bulba

Elgar: Sea Pictures, Op. 37

Saint-Saëns: Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Op. 78

References

"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, 3 June 2025, (Wozzeck, Opera Vlaanderen)

"Berg's uncompromising masterpiece remains a sledgehammer blow even today. Simons and Pérez make it a mad show - in every sense of the word."

De Standaard, Bram van Haelter, 2 June 2025, (Wozzeck, Opera Vlaanderen)

"The visually austere directorial concept allows the music to come to the fore, and you don't have to tell conductor Alejo Pérez twice. Wozzeck is a milestone of expressionist musical theatre and one of the first operas to flirt so explicitly with the limits of tonality. Berg uses extreme dynamics, abrupt silences, screeching contrasts and a tonal language full of abrasive dissonances to bring Wozzeck's psychosis and hopelessness to life. This is where the Argentine conductor goes full steam ahead: the blistering orchestral tension builds culminate in a finale that leaves no soul untouched."

Opernwelt, Lotte Thaler, 18 July 2025 (Wozzeck, Opera Vlaanderen)

“And you have to take your hat off to the Argentinian conductor Alejo Pérez, who lightens up the textures in this monumental work to form a remarkably fluid orchestral framework and soak it with a dramatic tension that never lets down.”

Crescendo-Magazine, Paul-André Demierre, 28 March 2025, (Khovantchina, Grand Theatre de Geneve)

"...The Sächsische Staatskapelle under Argentinian guest conductor Alejo Perez gives the evening great, exciting brilliance. A blooming, glowing cosmos of sound that captivates from the first bar."

MDR Klassik, Michael Ernst, 29 April 2024 (Káťa Kabanová, Semperoper Dresden)

"Alejo Pérez succeeds in shaping Strauss's score transparently despite its massiveness. Where the opera is almost falling apart and the composer pours out his virtuoso, Bavarian-style self-assurance, Alejo Pérez also gives the monkey sugar. In between, the musical partners repeatedly find a rhetorically well-founded, distinct chamber tone and transform the virile, lusciousness of the musical text into delicate, finely-nerved eloquence."

Opernwelt, Jürgen Otten, February 2025, (Salome, Opera Vlaanderen)

“We’re in particularly safe hands musically. Alejo Pérez conducts without artifice and presents Stravinsky’s music in all its honesty. (...) Avoiding artifice, he conducts with pure naturalness and grace. An enthused, spirited Adelaide Symphony Orchestra follow with their usual high degree of accomplishment.”

InReview, Graham Strahle, 2 March 2024 (The Nightingale and Other Fables, Adelaide Festival)

“The Orkest Opera Ballet Vlaanderen was terrific. Alejo Perez’s baton was absolutely in time with the youthful exuberance of this production: daring flourishes of fortepiano in the recitatives, electrifying articulation in the strings, the ‘mafia funeral’ moments for the trumpets – those heralds of Verdi – and, of course, there was pure clarinet seduction.”

bachtrack.com, Eleanor Knight, 12 September 2023 (La Clemenza di Tito, Opera Vlaanderen)

“Pérez succeeds in giving a large ensemble the sound and energy usually found in smaller ensembles.”

forumopera.com, Maxime de Brogniez, 21 September 2023 (La Clemenza di Tito, Opera Vlaanderen)

“Conductor Alejo Pérez has the orchestra striving and yearning, swirling with passion and endlessly tender singing especially in Tristan’s death scene and Isolde’s Love Death.”

KLARA, Sylvia Broeckaert, 23 March 2023 (Tristan und Isolde, Opera Vlaanderen)

“The music then becomes the key word of the performance, first and foremost through the direction of Alejo Pérez. His intense reading of the work (…) is greeted with a standing ovation by the audience.”

Forum Opera, Christophe Rizoud, 26 March 2023 (Tristan und Isolde, Opera Vlaanderen)

“Alejo Pérez, remarkably efficient, alert to every feeling, revealing tenderness as well as murderous madness, an unparalleled creator and lover of sound, is particularly at ease in this musical element.”

letemps.ch, Sylvie Bonier, 16 September 2021 (War and Peace, Grand Théâtre de Genève)

“The crispness and elegance of Alejo Pérez’ conducting style are combined with the kind of inspiring imaginative ability an orchestra needs to test and transcend its boundaries.”

Die Welt, Peter Krause, 21 March 2018 (Concert with the Philharmonische Staatsorchester Hamburg)

“More relaxed and joyful than in the Strauss, the Vienna Philharmonic and the highly-talented Alejo Pérez created a wonderful sound, treading the fine line between penetrating pathos and sentiment without becoming sweet or sensationalist. In Marguerite’s great scene, the conductor and orchestra sparkled. A great achievement.”

Online Musik Magazin, Thomas Tillmann, 20 August 2016

“From Wagner’s opulence to the soft backlight of impressionism, from veristic emotional outbursts to seditiously expressionistic opalescence: under the direction of the magician Alejo Pérez who can turn frogs into princes, the orchestra of l’Opéra de Lyon brought Schreker’s visions to life.”

Le Monde, 17 March 2015 (The Stigmatised)