Grammy Award-winning conductor Karen Kamensek’s 2025/26 season includes debuts at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, the Opéra national de Paris, and the Opéra Royal de Wallonie- Liège. She will also return to the Royal Swedish Opera, for the Swedish premiere of Elena Langer’s Figaro Gets a Divorce.
This season Kamensek makes her debut with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and Netherlands Radio Choir; and opens the Calgary Philharmonic’s subscription season. Recent opera highlights include Royal Opera House Covent Garden (Tosca); Houston Grand Opera (La bohème); Semperoper Dresden (Candide); San Francisco Opera (The Handmaid’s Tale); the Metropolitan Opera (Moby Dick, Akhnaten, Rigoletto); English National Opera (Akhnaten, Satyagraha); Welsh National Opera (Dead Man Walking, Candide); Lyric Opera of Chicago (Die Zauberflöte); the Royal Swedish Opera in (Victoria Borisova-Ollas’s Dracula); Opéra National du Rhin (Glass’s ballet Alice, world premiere); and Bernstein’s Wonderful Town with the Norwegian Opera. She has also appeared at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Oper Frankfurt, Opera Australia (Melbourne) and San Diego Opera.
Kamensek’s recent work as a symphonic conductor includes the London Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Baltimore Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Sydney Symphony, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Deutsches Symphonie- Orchester Berlin, Oslo Philharmonic, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Vancouver Symphony, Brussels Philharmonic, Orquesta Filarmónicade Gran Canaria, Orquesta Sinfónica RTVE in Madrid, Colorado Symphony, Norrköping Symphony, Opéra Orchestre National Montpellier, Calgary Philharmonic, Tiroler Symphonieorchester, and the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano.
Karen Kamensek served as the Music Director of the Staatsoper Hannover from 2011 to 2016.