Hartmut Keil

1 October saw Hartmut Keil assume his professorship in musical interpretation for stage perfor-mance at the Department of Vocal Studies and Music Theatre.

Hartmut Keil, born in Wesel in 1978, completed his conducting studies in Würzburg and began his career working as a solo repetiteur at the Mainfranken Theater Würzburg. In 2002, he began a 14-year stint with the Frankfurt Opera as a repetiteur and Kapellmeister, in which capacity he conducted a broad repertoire (including all of the major Mozart operas, La Traviata, Un ballo in maschera, Die Fledermaus, La Bohème, Tosca, Lohengrin, and Ariadne auf Naxos). As first Kapellmeister at Theater Bremen, he conducted Alban Berg’s Lulu in addition to premièring productions of Rusalka and The Rake’s Progress. He went on to conduct the Wiener Symphoniker in a production of Die Zauberflöte at the Bregenz Festival in 2013 and 2014. There, he also led performances of Mozart’s Da Ponte operas with young singers and the Vorarlberg Symphony Orchestra.

Guest conducting engagements have taken him to venues including Theater Basel and the Staatstheater Darmstadt. Keil’s contemporary music expertise is borne witness by numerous music theatre productions as well as concerts with Ensemble Modern and Ensemble Ascolta. He has also been working for the Bayreuth Festival since 2003, and he led the Vienna Chamber Orchestra in Tristan Experiment—a chamber version of Tristan und Isolde for 22 musicians—in 2021. This production (conceived and staged by Günther Groissböck) went on to win the 2022 Austrian Music Theatre Award.

Helmut Keil taught at the Würzburg University of Music from 2004 to 2009 and is currently finishing a teaching engagement at the Zurich University of the Arts (2019–early 2024). He began teaching at the mdw in 2020 as a senior lecturer.