Highlights of Joel’s 2021/22 season include his return to the Volksoper Wien, Verdi Il Trovatore and Puccini Il Trittico for Hessian State Theatre Wiesbaden, Puccini Tosca for Hamburg State Opera, Verdi Rigoletto for Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, Rossini Il barbiere di Siviglia for Malmö Opera, Carmen for Deutsche Oper am Rhein and Rigoletto for Opéra National de Lyon. On the symphonic stage, he will conduct the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra of the Opera Ballet Vlaanderen.
Recent highlights include Verdi Rigoletto at the Opéra national de Lorraine, his house debut with Welsh National Opera conducting Verdi Rigoletto, Verdi Luisa Miller and Puccini La bohème for English National Opera and Verdi Luisa Miller for Staatsoper Hamburg. Joel made his debut at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in 2012 and has been a regular guest ever since, conducting productions of Tosca, Carmen, La Traviata, Rigoletto and La bohème. Other operatic highlights have included new produtions of Manon Lescaut for Dutch National Opera, Madama Butterfly at the Staatsoper Hamburg (available on DVD with Arthaus), Verdi Macbeth at the Royal Danish Opera, Rigoletto and Madama Butterfly at the Grand Théâtre de Genève and Faust at the Sächsische Staatsoper Dresden. He is also a regular guest at houses such as Bayerische Staatsoper, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Semper Oper Dresden, Finnish national Opera, New National Theatre in Toyko, and Den Norske Opera, Deutsche Opera am Rhein, Oper Koln, Hamburg Staatsoper, Teatro Municipale Santiago di Chile, Boston Lyric opera, Royal Opera Stockholm, Volksoper Wien, and 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 Grand Théâtre de Genève, the WDR Rundfunkorchester, Duisburger Philharmoniker, Düsseldorfer Symphoniker, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre National de Montpellier, Haydn Orchestra of Bolzano, BBC Philharmonic and RSO Wien. He recently made his symphonic debut with the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra at the Concertgebouw.
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 including Bruckner, Brahms and Beethoven. In the opera field, he specialised in the core German repertoire with operas such as Salome, Lohengrin, Rosenkavalier, Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal.
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 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.
2021/22 season / 571 words. Not to be altered without permission