Peter Selwyn

Music Staff

Peter studied Modern Languages at Cambridge, then piano at the Royal Academy of Music. He has conducted over 60 different operas, for companies including Opera North, Welsh National Opera, English Touring Opera, Opera Holland Park and Singapore Lyric Opera, and assisted at the ROH, ENO in Oslo and at the Aldeburgh and Bregenz Festivals. During 8 years in Germany, he worked as Head of Music and Kapellmeister at Staatstheater Nürnberg, spent a season at the Hamburgische Staatsoper, and assisted for three seasons at the Bayreuther Festspiele on the millennial Ring Cycle. He co-founded and for nearly 20 years was co-Artistic Director of the Internationales Kammermusikfestival Nürnberg, where he conducted numerous Britten chamber operas and several operatic world premieres.

He has a large and varied symphonic repertoire and has worked with many orchestras and ensembles in Europe and UK. This includes the Nürnberger Philharmoniker, Wiener Symphoniker, Orchestra dell’ Teatro Comunale di Bologna, City of London Sinfonia, Orchestras of Opera North and Welsh National Opera, Southbank Sinfonia, Aurora Orchestra and National Youth Orchestra of Scotland.

An experienced and passionate Wagnerian, he has worked on numerous full Ring Cycles, at Bayreuth, ROH, Nuremberg, Strasbourg, Longborough Festival and with the LPO. In 2022, he concluded a 3-year project conducting Jonathan Dove’s innovative reduction of the Ring Cycle for the Grimeborn Festival, conducted Tristan und Isolde at St John’s Smith Square for the London Opera Company, and returned to Bayreuth to assist on the new Ring Cycle.

He is a Professor at the Royal College of Music and a regular coach on the Jette Parker Artists Programme at the Royal Opera, where he also works regularly on the music staff. He is the newly appointed Principal Conductor of the Lambeth Orchestra, one of London’s oldest and finest amateur orchestras, and Music Director of the London Opera Company.

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Faculties / departments: RCM International Opera School