Rainer Mühlbach

Rainer Mühlbach completed his piano and conducting studies at the Hochschule Carl Maria von Weber in his hometown of Dresden. After assisting Leonard Bernstein, he first had engagements as a solo repetiteur with conducting duties at the Semperoper Dresden, the Theater Basel and the Hamburg State Opera. From 1995 to 2000 he was 1st Kapellmeister at the Bremen Theatre. Bremen Theatre. Here he conducted "Idomeneo", "Fidelio", "Otello", "Der fliegende Holländer", "Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg", "Der Rosenkavalier" and "Ariadne auf Naxos", among others. At the Semperoper Dresden he conducted several productions of the opera repertoire and some ballet premieres as well as Mozart's Da Ponte operas and "The Magic Flute", "Carmen", "Hansel and Gretel". The Cologne Opera invited the artist for the revivals of "Die Entführung aus dem Serail", "Die Zauberflöte", "Don Giovanni" and "La Cenerentola" as well as for the new production of "Dialogues des Carmélites". He made guest appearances in the new production of Bizet's "Carmen" at the Theater Basel, the Nationaltheater Weimar, Aalto-Musiktheater Essen, Grand Théâtre de Genève as well as at the Oper Graz and the Opéra de Paris. At the Hamburg State Opera, he conducted the premieres of John Neumeier's ballet creations "Bernstein Dances" and "Nijinsky", among others. Guest performances of these productions took him to Baden-Baden, Lincoln Center New York, Copenhagen, Washington and Madrid. From 2004 to 2007, Mühlbach was General Music Director of the city of Münster, where he conducted new productions of "Lohengrin", "Halka" (Moniuszko), "Fidelio", "Otello" and "Don Giovanni", among others. The artist has conducted the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Dresden Philharmonic, the SWR Baden-Baden Symphony Orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre symphonique de Madrid, the Royal Danish Orchestra, the Washington National Opera Orchestra, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and the NDR Symphony Orchestra, among others.

At the Cologne Opera, Rainer Mühlbach has been head of the International Opera Studio of the Cologne Opera and musical director of the Cologne Children's Opera since 2012. Projects in the children's opera section have included the development of versions of the Wagner cycle "Der Ring des Nibelungen" for young and old (premiere of "Das Rheingold" in autumn 2017, concluding with "Götterdämmerung" in spring 2021). These productions were part of the 2019 OPER! Award-winning "Best Education Programme of German-speaking Stages" and was invited to Korea for 2022. In the 2016.17 season, he conducted Schönberg's "Pierrot lunaire" (directed by Kai Anne Schuhmacher) as part of the Cologne Theatre Night. In the following season, Mühlbach was musical director of the productions of "Der Kaiser von Atlantis" by Viktor Ullmann, Benjamin Britten's "The Rape of Lucretia" and the children's opera "Pollicino" by Hans Werner Henze, which the Cologne Opera, Cologne Children's Opera produced in collaboration with the Cologne Opera.