Richard Farnes

English conductor Richard Farnes is as persuasive in his interpretations of the operas of Britten, Mozart, Verdi and Janáček, as he is when he takes Wagner’s Ring Cycle on the road around the UK.

He has conducted orchestras across the globe and in the UK, including all the BBC orchestras, working with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the BBC Proms in London and at the Dubai Proms, where he conducted the first-ever performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in 2019. Recent engagements have taken him twice to the Symphony Orchestra of India in Mumbai.

Farnes was Music Director of Opera North in Leeds from 2004 to 2016, embarking with them on an ambitious project to perform Wagner’s Ring semi-staged, which culminated in 2016 with six highly acclaimed complete Ring Cycles across the UK and streamed online. In 2022 he returned to Opera North to conduct semi-staged performances of Parsifal in various UK cities.

For the Royal Opera in London, Farnes has conducted Simon Boccanegra, Il trovatore and Death in Venice, and Falstaff at the Metropolitan Opera. He has had close associations with both Glyndebourne and Scottish Opera. Other opera engagements have included The Turn of the Screw with London Symphony Orchestra and La traviata for the Royal Danish Opera in Copenhagen. He returned to English National Opera with La traviata at the end of 2023 and opens the 2024–25 season there with Rigoletto.