Frederic Chaslin
Frédéric Chaslin was educated at the Paris Conservatoire and the Salzburg Mozarteum. In 1989, he began his conducting career as assistant to Daniel Barenboim in Paris and Bayreuth. In 1991, he became Pierre Boulez’s assistant at the Ensemble InterContemporain in Paris. In 1991–1994, he served as musical director of the Rouen Opera. In 1993, he made his international début at the Bregenz Festival, where he conducted for four seasons and collaborated with David Pountney on his notable productions of Verdi’s Nabucco and Beethoven’s Fidelio. In 1997, he became a resident conductor of the Vienna State Opera, conducting more than 110 performances of major repertoire including Halévy’s La Juive with Neil Shicoff and Massenet’s Werther with Jonas Kaufmann. In 1999–2002, he served as chief conductor of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. In 2002, he made his Metropolitan Opera debut, conducting Verdi’s Il trovatore and since then has led the Met productions of Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffmann, Verdi’s Les vêpres siciliennes, Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, and Puccini’s La Bohème. In 2005, he conducted Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet at the Los Angeles Opera, with Rolando Villazon and Anna Netrebko in the title roles. In 2005–2006, he was general musical director of the Mannheim National Theatre, where he conducted Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and Tannhäuser as well as all of Richard Strauss’s major works. Chaslin served for four seasons as chief conductor and musical director of the Santa Fe Opera Festival where he conducted Verdi’s La traviata (2009), Gounod’s Faust (2011), Puccini’s Tosca with Thomas Hampson (2012), and Rossini’s Maometto II (2012). Chaslin conducted Tosca, Giordano’s Andrea Chénier, and Les contes d’Hoffmann at the New National Tokyo Theatre.
Chaslin has appeared at many international festivals and companies including leading houses in New York, Berlin, Munich, Leipzig, Madrid, Barcelona, Rome, Venice, Scotland, and Wales. He has also led all the major orchestras of Paris, Vienna, Manchester, and London. Chaslin’s symphonic and operatic repertoire ranges from Bach to contemporary music. Chaslin has been involved in more than twenty world premieres of contemporary works.
Among his performances as a pianist, Chaslin has appeared with the Vienna Philharmonic in Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 and from the keyboard, he conducted Ravel’s G Major Concerto in Japan, Italy, and Israel.
As a composer, Chaslin has written orchestral pieces, movie soundtracks, and operas. His compositions include the Chagall Suite, Diva Dance for the movie The Fifth Element, the operas Wuthering Heights and Vampire Junction, and three song cycles based on the poems by Robert Frost. Selections from Wuthering Heights have been recently performed in St Petersburg with Natalie Dessay under the baton of Valery Gergiev, as well as in Oslo, Bologna, and Israel. Nowadays, Chaslin works on the operatic Diptyque Fantastique: La Morte Amoureuse coupled with Avatar, based on the short works of the French author Theophile Gautier. Chaslin is the author of the book La Musique dans Tous les Sens (Music in Every Sense). Since 2012, Chaslin has held the position of chief conductor and musical director of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra.
