Myron Michailidis


Myron Michailidis is a Greek conductor, since 2018 Generalmusikdirektor of both the Erfurt Opera & the :de:Philharmonisches Orchester Erfurt|Philharmonic Orchestra of Erfurt in Germany. He is regarded today as one of the most important Greek conductors.
Michailidis is also, since 2019, the first Artistic Director of the new Cultural and Conference Center of Crete in Heraklion, Greece.
Previously, between 2011 and 2017, Michailidis held the position of Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Greek National Opera in Athens, Greece, of which he made one of the great European opera houses. From 2004 to 2011 he was the General Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the , while from 1999 to 2004 he served as Permanent Conductor at the Opera of Eastern Saxony in Germany.
The repertoire of Myron Michailidis, which consists of a catalog that exceeds 250 symphonic works and 40 operas, ranges from Baroque to Contemporary music and includes Symphonic as well as Choral works alongside operas. He is a great proponent of the music of Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, as well as of the operas of Verdi, Puccini, Gounod and Wagner.
Michailidis has conducted the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, the :de:Philharmonisches_Orchester_Erfurt|Philharmonic Orchestra of Erfurt, the Braunschweig State Orchestra, the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, the Rome Symphony Orchestra, the , the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra, the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Bucharest National Opera, the George Enescu Philharmonic Orchestra, the National Radio Orchestra of Romania, the , the :ru:Астраханский театр оперы и балета|Astrakhan State Theater Symphony Orchestra, the Bilkent Symphony Orchestra, the Μexico State Orchestra, as well as all Greek symphony orchestras, including the , the , the , and the Greek National Opera Orchestra.
He has collaborated with leading artists, including Aldo Ciccolini, Paul Badura-Skoda, Cyprien Katsaris, Ivo Pogorelić, Lars Vogt, Fazil Say, Barry Douglas, Martino Tirimo, Dimitris Sgouros, Salvatore Accardo, Vadim Repin, Shlomo Mintz, , Mischa Maisky, Theodore Kerkezos, Paata Burchuladze, June Anderson, Cheryl Studer, and several others. About his close collaboration with Myron Michailidis and the Thessaloniki State Symphony Orchestra, the legendary pianist Aldo Ciccolini was declaring in May 2006:
Also more recently, following a concert conducted by Michailidis in Erfurt in September 2018, Cyprien Katsaris, who played Shostakovich's piano concerto No. 2, declared:

Education

Myron Michailidis was born in Heraklion, on the island of Crete in Greece. He studied piano with :el:Δημήτρης Τουφεξής|Dimitris Toufexis in Athens. He continued his musical studies at the Berlin University of the Arts in Berlin, where he studied conducting with Hans-Martin Rabenstein. He also participated in Master Classes by Miltiades Caridis and Sir Simon Rattle. He holds as well a degree from the Faculty of Law of the University of Athens.

Career

Thessaloniki State Symphony Orchestra (2004-2011)

During his tenure as General Artistic Director of the between 2004 and 2011, Myron Michailidis radically renewed the orchestra's programming and penetrated the international discography. He also conducted numerous concerts at the Orchestra's residence, the Thessaloniki Concert Hall and took it to various venues in Greece and abroad, such as the Smetana Hall and Rudolfinum in Prague, the Teatro Verdi in Florence, the Konzerthaus in Berlin etc. In December 2007, during the celebration events of the Cultural Year of Greece in China, he took the Orchestra on tour in Beijing, host of the 2008 Olympic Games, and conducted a historical performance at the Forbidden City Concert Hall.

Greek National Opera (2011–2017)

In 2011, Myron Michailidis was appointed Artistic Director of the Greek National Opera in Athens. Over his emblematic six-year tenure, and in the middle of the Greek economic debt crisis, Michailidis remarkably managed to increase both his profile and that of the Opera company, achievements which were both nationally and internationally acclaimed.
Economically, Michailidis successfully restored a balanced budget for the institution, the accumulated debt of €17 million he inherited in 2011 being nearly fully recovered as soon as in 2014. This notable result, achieved during the Greek economic crisis, has been obtained through specific spending cuts and by a substantial policy of public awareness, which significantly raised general and media interest for Lyric Art and increased both tickets sales and filling rates.
Michailidis indeed opened the doors of the Opera to a genuinely new audience and developed a large array of innovative artistic, cultural, societal and educational activities, such as open rehearsals, musical promenades in the streets of Athens, dance in city squares, open-air free concerts and opera galas in unconventional venues. Other initiatives included the programs "Suitcase Opera" and "Opera Bus", the establishment of a "GNO Children’s Chorus" and of a "Young Artists Program", and a participation to the EU outreach program "Interactive Opera for Primary Schools", which concerned 45,000 pupils in 147 schools in Greek regions.
under the Acropolis, in an open rehearsal of Puccini's Madame Butterfly.
In parallel, Michailidis developed a framework for international co-productions with large lyrical theaters such as the Royal Opera House of Covent Garden in London, the Welsh National Opera, the Vienna State Opera, the Arena di Verona Festival, the Teatro La Fenice in Venice. He also deepened and extended GNO's relations with other European theaters as a member of the European Forum of Lyrical Theaters, Opera Europa.
Artistically, Michailidis conducted many opera performances within the walls of GNO's historic building, in the open-air antic Herodes Atticus Theater during the annual summer's Athens Festival and in the two halls of the Megaro Mousikis, with a majority of representations sold out. He conducted Les contes d'Hoffmann, L'elisir d'amore, Fedora, Tosca, Il Trovatore, L'italiana in Algeri, La Traviata, Die Zauberflöte, Faust, I vespri siciliani, Madama Butterfly, Macbeth, Otello, La Bohème, Tristan und Isolde, Aida and Lohengrin. GNO's repertoire was significantly increased and proposed 35 new opera and operetta titles, as well as 11 new ballets.
in Puccini's Tosca at the Theater of Herodes Atticus under the Acropolis
Michailidis also continued to champion the production of rare works and of contemporary music. Notably, he produced stage performances of contemporary works composed by 6 Greek modern composers, and in 2014, the creation in world's premiere of the contemporary Opera The Murderess written by Giorgos Koumendakis, GNO's "composer in residence". Michailidis also conducted the GNO Orchestra & Choir in two novel productions of Richard Wagner's Operas: Tristan und Isolde and Lohengrin, which were both heard for the first time in Greek history, in their integral, original and scenic versions. House in the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center newly built by architect Renzo Piano |alt=|leftOne of Michailidis most successful long-term achievement was certainly the relocation of the GNO in 2017 from its former venue, the historic Olympia Theater located in the center of Athens, to its newly built headquarters in the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, a state-of-the-art performing arts center designed by famous architect Renzo Piano, which includes new facilities for the National Library of Greece and for the Greek National Opera , located in a 210,000 m² park nearby Athens center, in Palaio Faliro, on the Athens riviera. Notably, in 2014, before the move, Michailidis conducted a strikingly poetic live performance of the GNO orchestra on the construction site of the SNFCC, during which 10 tower cranes literally “danced” to the music of Gustav Holst's The Planets, with Renato Zanella's unique choreography.

Theater Erfurt & Erfurt Philharmonic Orchestra (2018-)

After completing two mandates at the GNO, and a few months only before GNO's final installation in the SNFCC, the Greek Ministry of Culture announced to the general surprise in February 2017 that Michailidis contract will not be extend beyond that season, provoking a great shock in public opinion. Following his invitation at the Opera House of Shanghai to conduct Donizetti's La Fille du régiment and at the Theater Erfurt to conduct the rare Giulietta e Romeo of Riccardo Zandonai, it was announced, late 2017, that Michailidis was chosen by the direction of the Theater Erfurt and by the members the :de:Philharmonisches Orchester Erfurt|Erfurt Philharmonic Orchestra to become their new Generalmusikdirektor for the next two seasons.
For his 2018/19 season debut, Michailidis conducted a new production of Bizet's Carmen at the 2018 Erfurt summer's open-air festival, :de:DomStufen-Festspiele|DomStufen-Festspiele. For the following seasons, he will conduct Lehár's Die Lustige Witwe, Rimsky-Korsakov's The Tale of Tsar Saltan, Verdi's Aida & Nabucco and Wagner's Lohengrin, as well as well as a series of symphonic works of Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, Mahler, Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Kabalevsky, Berlioz, Massenet, Debussy, Dutilleux, Skalkottas and Theodorakis. Michailidis is conducting the Philharmonisches Orchester Erfurt either in the new Opera House of the Erfurt Theater or in several other Thuringian venues, such as the historic "Festsaal" of the Wartburg castle.

Cultural and Conference Center of Crete (2019-)

In February 2019, Myron Michailidis has been appointed as the first Artistic Director of the newly built Cultural and Conference Center of Crete, in Heraklion, Greece, a position he holds in parallel to his current position of Generalmusikdirektor at the Theater Erfurt. For its historical inaugural concert, Michailidis has conducted the in works of Markopoulos, Theodorakis, Rossini, Massenet and Tchaikovsky, all inspired by the Cretan or Mediterranean tradition.

Recordings

Michailidis has recorded for EMI Classics and repeatedly for Naxos, as well as for numerous Greek labels and for the Greek National Radio: