Alexander Joel’s 2022/2023 season included highlights such as his return to the Staatsoper Hamburg for the Revival of Gounod’s “Faust”, his return to the Oper Zürich for the concertant Premiere of Delibes “Lakmé”, as well as a concentration on Richard Wagner’s operas, giving his Debut with “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg” and “Tristan und Isolde” at the Staatstheater Wiesbaden. Future engagements for consequent seasons include his return for his 8th Production at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden with “La Traviata”, a return to the English National Opera for a new production of “Macbeth”, and a whole series of Puccini Operas (“Madama Butterfly”, “Tosca” and “Il Trittico”) at the Staatsoper Hamburg.
As of September 2022/23 he is principal guest conductor at the Volksoper Wien where he conducts “Boheme” and “Die Fledermaus”, next year he will conduct “La Rondine” with Lotte de Beer as stage director.
Also next year he will, amongst others, conduct “Die Fledermaus” at Opera Ballet Vlaanderen Antwerp and “The Makropulos Affair” at Opera Lyon.
Alexander Joel is a regular guest at the Royal Opera house Covent Garden since the 2012/2013 season, having conducted Carmen, “La Traviata” and “La Bohème” (twice), “Rigoletto” and “Tosca” there since then. Other opera highlights in the last few seasons have included premieres of “Madama Butterfly” at the Staatsoper Hamburg (available on DVD with Arthaus), Verdi’s “Macbeth” at the Royal Danish Opera, new productions of “Rigoletto” and “Madama Butterfly” at the Grand Théâtre de Genève, “Faust” at the Sächsische Staatsoper Dresden. Furthermore, he is a regular guest since 2001 at houses such as the Bayerische Staatsoper, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Semperoper Dresden, the Finnish national Opera, then New National Theatre in Toyko, and Den Norske Opera, the Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, the Deutsche Opera am Rhein, the Oper Cologne, the Hamburg Staatsoper, the Teatro Municipale Santiago di Chile, the Boston Lyric opera, the Royal Opera Stockholm, the opera in Malmö, the Welsh National Opera, the English National Opera, Opera Zürich, the opera in Geneva, the Volksoper Wien, the opera de Marseilles.
On the concert platform, he is a regular guest with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (after his work with them at the Geneva Opera), the WDR Rundfunkorchester, Duisburger Philharmoniker, Düsseldorfer Symphoniker, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre National de Montpellier, Haydn Orchestra of Bolzano, BBC Philharmonic, the RSO
Wien.
Alexander Joel held the position of Generalmusikdirektor of the Staatstheater and Staatsorchester Braunschweig from 2007 to 2014 where he conducted most of the symphonic repertoire, with his emphasis being the Mahler Symphonies (Mahler’s Symphony No.1 available on CD at Corvello Classics) and the German/Austrian repertoire- Bruckner, Brahms and Beethoven. In the opera field, he specialised in the core German repertoire with operas such as “Salome”, “Lohengrin”, “Der Rosenkavalier”, “Tristan und Isolde” and “Parsifal”.
Furthermore he was appointed Principle guest conductor at the Vlaamse Opera from the 2016/2017 season to 2018, where he conducted tremendously succesful productions such as “Frau ohne Schatten”, “Don Carlos”, “Das Wunder der Heliane”, “Forza del Destino”, “Don Giovanni” and “Otello”, as well as covering a broad Concert repertoire.
Son of a British mother and a German father, Alexander Joel is a dual national who grew up in Vienna and London and was educated in Switzerland.
After a brief spell of studying French and English Law at King’s College in London, he moved back to Vienna to study piano at the Academy of Music, before completing his conducting studies at the Vienna Conservatory of Music with honours in 1996. He was a prize winner at the European Conducting Competition in Spoleto that same year. After various Kapellmeister positions in Baden, Klagenfurt and the Vienna Volksoper, Joel was First Kapellmeister at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein from 2001 to 2007.
He moved back to Vienna in 2018.