Vassilis Christopoulos

Greek conductor Vassilis Christopoulos has been Artistic Director of the Athens State Orchestra from May 2011 to May 2014. He is Chief Conductor of the Southwest German Philharmonic Orchestra of Constance since 2005.

He has conducted prestigious orchestras including the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Bremen and Duisburg Philharmonic Orchestras, the NDR-Radiophilharmonie Hannover, the New Japan Philharmonic, the Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa, and the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra.

As a regular guest conductor of the Greek National Opera in Athens between 1999 and 2005, Vassilis Christopoulos has conducted Tosca, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, La Traviata, The Mother’s Ring by Manolis Kalomiris, the Greek premieres of Handel’s Serse and Vivaldi’s Orlando furioso, as well as Lysistrata by Mikis Theodorakis in its first worldwide productions in Athens and Thessaloniki. He has also conducted opera productions at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Dusseldorf (Rigoletto, Die Zauberflote), and in Constance (Die Gartnerin aus Liebe, Die Kluge, Dido and Aeneas).

His discography includes the premiere recording of Concertos by Nikos Skalkottas with the Thessaloniki State Symphony Orchestra which was released on BIS in 2008. His CD “Mozart Arias” featuring French Soprano Geraldine Casey and the Southwest German Philharmonic was awarded a golden Orpheus by the Academie internationale du disque lyrique in Paris for the best Mozart recording in 2009.

He was born in Munich in 1975. He began his musical studies with oboe and music theory at the Athens Conservatory. From 1993 to 1995 he was an oboist with the Greek Radio Symphony Orchestra.

From 1995 he studied orchestral conducting with Professor Hermann Michael at the “Hochschule fur Musik” in Munich, graduating with distinction in 1998 and obtaining a “Meisterklassendiplom” two years later. He had also the chance of working with Sir Colin Davis, Zubin Mehta, and Reinhard Goebel.

In 1999 he was nominated “Young Musician of the Year” by the Greek Music and Drama Critics’ Association. In 2000 he won First Prize at the 1st Bad Homburg Conducting Competition in Germany and Second Prize at the Dimitri Mitropoulos International Conducting Competition in Athens.