The Australian-born Nicholas Carter is one of the most promising conductors of his generation. Since 2021, he has been the chief conductor and co-opera director of the Bühnen Bern, after he previously held the roles of conductor at the Staatsoper Hamburg and Deutsche Oper Berlin, as well as chief conductor at the Stadttheater Klagenfurt and the Kärntner Sinfonieorchester. From 2016 to 2019, Carter was chief conductor of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and is since then in demand internationally in the symphonic context as well. With the beginning of the 2026/27 season, he will now function as chief musical director of the Staatsoper Stuttgart and the Staatsorchester Stuttgart.
The focus of Nicholas Carter’s time in Bern was the new production of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen. He conducted the cycle in the 2023/24 season at the Deutsche Oper Berlin as well. In the 2024/25 season, he lead a new production of Prokofiev’s The Gambler at the Staatsoper Stuttgart and returned for Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro to the Staatsoper Hamburg.
In recent seasons, he was also engaged at the Wiener Staatsoper, the Oper Köln, the Santa Fe Opera as well as at Glyndebourne Festival. His extensive opera repertoire spans from Mozart, Verdi and Strauss over Russian and French pieces to contemporary composers like Brett Dean, with whom he has a close artistic relationship. Apart from the regular cooperation with the leading symphonic orchestras of Australia, some of Carter’s most recent and upcoming symphonic highlights include performances with the Seattle Symphony, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre national du Capitole de Toulouse, the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin and the Hong Kong Philharmonic, amongst others.
At the Staatsoper Stuttgart, Nicholas Carter will take on the musical direction of new productions of Lady Macbeth von Mzensk and Der Rosenkavalier as well as of the repertoire introductions of Idomeneo, Der fliegende Holländer and La Bohème. In concert, he will be conducting the first, fourth and sixth symphony concert as well as Zu Gast beim Beethovenfest and Sing along.