Alan Gilbert has been named as Music Director of the Royal Swedish Opera, a post he will take up in 2021. He will combine the role with that of Chief Conductor of Hamburg’s NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, a position he began this season, giving a strongly Europe-centred focus to the American conductor’s work.

The move represents a return to the Swedish capital for Gilbert, who was Chief Conductor of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra from 2000 to 2008 (he remains Conductor Laureate) prior to serving for eight years as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic. Indeed, in welcoming the appointment, the conductor said: ‘It is of course particularly meaningful for me to be coming back to such a musically vibrant situation in my adopted hometown.’

According to Birgitta Svendén, CEO and Artistic Director of the Royal Swedish Opera, ‘Alan’s performances with the company over the past several seasons were major highlights for our audiences and for everyone involved in the productions: artistic experiences of exceptional quality that I will never forget. We feel it is a major achievement for us, indeed a critical milestone, to bring a musician of his extraordinary stature and international reputation to our company.’

His first production with the company in the post will be Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, though Stockholm audiences will be able to see him prior to that when he conducts the revival of Puccini’s Fanciulla del West later this year, May 22–June 7.

Gilbert’s most recent review in Gramophone's pages was in November, of Bruckner's Symphony No 7, with his Hamburg ensemble and released by Sony Classical. It was warmly received overall by our critic Christian Hoskins, who said: 'Gilbert's navigation of the symphonic structure ... is clear-sighted and purposeful.'