Richard Armstrong (conductor)

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Sir Richard Armstrong CBE (born 7 January 1943 in Leicester) is a British conductor. He was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he was an organ scholar.

[edit] Overview

From 1973 until 1986 he was musical director of the Welsh National Opera. He was Music Director of Scottish Opera from 1993 to 2005. During this time he conducted the Company in operas including Jenufa, From the House of the Dead, I due Foscari, Salome, Fidelio, Mary Stuart, Katya Kabanova, Peter Grimes, Tristan und Isolde, La forza del destino, The Jacobin, La traviata, Il trovatore, the world première of James MacMillan’s Inés de Castro, (a revival of which was broadcast by BBC television), The Cunning Little Vixen, Turandot, Hansel and Gretel, La bohème, The Queen of Spades, Dalibor, Der Rosenkavalier, Macbeth, Parsifal and Don Giovanni, Erwartung, Duke Bluebeards's Castle, Knot Garden and Fidelio. He conducted five complete performances of Scottish Opera’s acclaimed Ring Cycle, which opened at the 2003 Edinburgh International Festival, and was subsequently seen at the Theatre Royal Glasgow, and The Lowry, Salford. He led Scottish Opera on a number of visits abroad: to Lisbon in 1994, to the 2000 Vienna Festival, where the Company performed its highly praised production of Macbeth, and to Porto in 2001, where he conducted the European première of MacMillan’s Inés de Castro.

After Cambridge, Richard Armstrong joined the music staff of the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, where he worked with Solti on the Ring, with Giulini on La traviata, with Otto Klemperer on Fidelio and with Kubelik on Jenufa.

As Music Director of Welsh National Opera from 1973-86 he worked in collaboration with many leading European directors, including Peter Stein, Joachim Herz, Lucian Pintilie, and Harry Kupfer, conducting a wide repertoire of Verdi, Wagner, Janácek, Strauss, Berg and Britten and, in 1986, performances of the complete Ring Cycle. He has returned regularly to WNO as a guest conductor, notably for the world première of Peter Maxwell-Davies’ The Doctor of Myddfai, and for Peter Stein’s 1988 production of Falstaff, which he also conducted in New York, Milan, Paris and Tokyo.

He has conducted Billy Budd, Andrea Chénier, Un ballo in maschera and Don Carlos for The Royal Opera, Covent Garden, and Aida, Wozzeck and (in a co-production with Scottish Opera) the UK premières of Schnittke’s Life with an Idiot for English National Opera. His opera work abroad includes engagements in Frankfurt (where he was, for two seasons, Principal Guest Conductor), Geneva, Paris, Munich, Amsterdam, Rome, Lisbon, Brussels, Nice, Canada, Australia, Stuttgart, Berlin, Toulouse and Los Angeles.

In 1978 he won the Janácek Medal in recognition of the pioneering Janácek cycle produced in collaboration with David Pountney for Welsh National Opera and Scottish Opera. In 2004 he conducted Katya Kabanova for the Janácek Festival in the composer’s native Brno, to celebrate Janácek’s 150th birthday.

Richard Armstrong made his Proms début in 1979, and has worked with many leading British orchestras, including the London Philharmonic, Philharmonia, BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Hallé, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.

He has recorded CDs with Roberto Alagna, Angela Gheorghiu, Deborah Voigt and Thomas Hampson with the LPO, Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

[edit] CBE

In 1993 Richard Armstrong was made Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for Services to Music, and was knighted in the 2004 New Year’s honours. In 1997, he was awarded the United Kingdom Conductor of the Year by the Royal Philharmonic Music Society. He is an Honorary Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and holds honorary doctorates in Music from Glasgow, Aberdeen and St Andrews Universities.