William Lacey

Biography

Conductor William Lacey was born in London in 1973. His wide opera and concert repertoire is equally weighted between the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, and also includes some works from the 17th and 21st centuries. From 2010 to 2013 he was Erster Kapellmeister at the Oper Leipzig where he conducted over one hundred performances with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. His Leipzig repertoire included Mahagonny, The Cunning Little Vixen, Hänsel und Gretel, Die Fledermaus, La bohème, La Rondine, Macbeth, La Traviata, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Il Turco in Italia, Don Giovanni, Cosi fan tutte, and Die Zauberflöte; ballets Cinderella (Prokofiev), Eine Weihnachtsgeschichte, Chaplin, Bach Tanzt!, Grosse Messe (Mozart), and Ein Liebestraum (Mahler and Wagner); the Leipziger Opernball (Johann Strauss); and Leipzig Opera House’s special 50th Anniversary concert.

Another highlight of his recent activities has been his regular performances with Plácido Domingo, including Handel’s Tamerlano in Barcelona, Washington, and Los Angeles, and Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride in Washington. In 2012 he conducted the world premiere of Jonathan Dove’s Life is a Dream in a production by Graham Vick with the Birmingham Opera Company, and Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Music Theatre. In June 2013 he made a very successful debut at Garsington Opera conducting Mozart’s Die entführung aus dem Serail, and in November he conducted Netia Jones’ highly acclaimed production of Britten’s Curlew River starring Ian Bostridge at the Barbican Centre in London.

In 2014 he returned to Moscow for his debut at the Bolshoi (concert performances of Le nozze di Figaro), a new production of Don Giovanni at the Stanislavsky Theatre, his debut concert at the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall, and two concerts with the Bolshoi Orchestra in both Moscow and St Petersburg. In 2015, he was music director of the new production of Le nozze di Figaro, followed by Billy Budd in 2016.

He most recently made his debut for Scottish opera conducting La cenerentola.

In North America, William Lacey has conducted regularly at many of the leading opera companies, including San Francisco Opera (where he was Staff Conductor from 1998 to 2001), Houston Grand Opera, Los Angeles Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Washington National Opera, the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto, New York City Opera, Utah Opera, and Glimmerglass Opera. His guest appearances in Europe have included the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, the Opéra Comique in Paris (with l’Orchestre de Paris), the Royal Opera in Stockholm, Norwegian National Opera, Greek National Opera, The Netherland’s Nationale Reisopera, Cologne Opera, English National Opera, Opera North, and Birmingham Opera Company.

William Lacey is increasingly in demand as a concert conductor, and has already appeared with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Ulster Orchestra, the Houston Symphony Orchestra, the Pacific Symphony Orchestra, the Israel Camerata, the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, the Youth Orchestra of Bolivia Clasica (La Paz), the Collegium Musicum of Copenhagen, the Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz, the Real Filharmonia de Galicia, the Orquesta Sinfonica de Navarra, l’Orchestre de Bretagne, the Haydn Orchestra of Bolzano, the Remix Orchestra (Porto), the Tiroler Festspiele Orchester, and the Orchestra of the Teatro Massimo Bellini in Catania. He made his debut with the Munich Radio Orchestra in 2011 and was re-invited for 2012. Notable recent concerts have included Mahler’s 5th Symphony at the Tiroler Festspiele, and Mahler’s 1st Symphony in Catania.