Omer Meir Wellber was born into a Russian-German family in Be’er Sheva in 1981, and is regarded today as one of Israel’s most talented young conductors. Since 2011 he has been General Music Director of the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia in Valencia in succession to Lorin Maazel. He is not only a regular guest conductor at the Israeli Opera, but has also been, since 2009, the Music Director of the Raanana Symphonette Orchestra Israel. Wellber, who now lives in Italy, also appears regularly at the opera houses in Berlin, Dresden, Vienna, Venice, Milan and Verona.

Between 2008 and 2010 he assisted Daniel Barenboim at the Berliner Staatsoper Unter den Linden and at La Scala in Milan. To great public and critical acclaim he conducted Aida when La Scala performed at the Israeli Opera. This was followed by Bizet’s Carmen at the Staatsoper Berlin, a new production of Strauss’s Daphne received with great applause at the Semperoper in Dresden, Puccini’s Tosca at the Berliner Staatsoper, and symphony concerts in Verona and at La Fenice in Venice.

In 2011/2012 he conducted Verdi’s Rigoletto to open a three-year project with the trilogia popolare at the Vienna Festival, La Traviata at the Berliner Staatsoper, Tosca in Valencia, Carmen and L’Elisir d’Amore in Venice, La Traviata at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, and various symphony concerts with the Orchestre de Paris, the Filarmonica della Scala, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestra of the RAI Turin, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the NDR Radiophilharmonie in Hannover, and the hr-Sinfonieorchester in Frankfurt.

Following Verdi’s Macbeth in Verona, and Rigoletto, Il barbiere di Siviglia and I due Foscari with Plácido Domingo in Valencia, his further engagements include premieres of Verdi’s Il Trovatore at the Vienna Festival, the jubilee performance of Aida with La Fura dels Baus in the Arena di Verona, Verdi’s Otello in Tel Aviv, Così fan tutte to open a Mozart/Da Ponte trilogy in Dresden, where he has more engagements in the future, and some symphony concerts with the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome.

Omer Meir Wellber can be heard on DVD in Mariusz Trelinski’s production of Eugene Onegin in Valencia (C Major).

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