Biography
Emmanuel Plasson has established himself as a leading ambassador for French music through his remarkable international career spanning both the symphonic and operatic worlds. Maestro Plasson made his North American debut in 1997 conducting the Royal Ballet, Covent Garden on tour, including performances at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. This resulted in an immediate invitation to be an Assistant Conductor at the Metropolitan Opera during the two following seasons (for productions of Manon and Carmen).
Maestro Emmanuel Plasson was principal conductor and artistic director of Hawaii Opera Theatre until April 2020. He made his debut with the company in 2016 conducting Verdi's Il Trovatore and was immediately invited back for Gounod's Roméo et Juliette.
2022 marked a new milestone in Emmanuel Plasson's career when he performed at the Landesgartenschau Beelitz, Germany, with his own chamber orchestra: Orchester Voyager. Furthermore, he returned to the Royal Ballet Covent Garden that season with a mixed program.
He has also collaborated with Tulsa Opera where he was invited to conduct Bizet's Pearlfishers and Gounod's Faust and recently conducted Puccini's Tosca in a tour of Southern France with the New York Opera Society. He has returned to the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden for several performances of a triple bill that included Stravinsky's Firebird and Bizet's Symphony in C. He received great critical acclaim for these performances.
Maestro Plasson’s career has seen engagements all around the globe:
In North America he has conducted at Boston Lyric Opera – Lucie de Lammermoor – , New York City Opera – La Périchole to great critical acclaim, L'Etoile and Les Pêcheurs de Perles – , New York Opera Society – Falstaff – , Opera Birmingham – Carmen and Samson et Dalilah – , Kentucky Opera – Roméo et Juliette and Cendrillon – , Minnesota Opera – Faust and Il Barbiere di Siviglia – , Cincinnatti Opera – Tales of Hoffmann – , Montclair State University – Albert Herring – , Hawaii Opera Theater – Il Trovatore, Roméo et Juliette, Tosca and Nozze di Figaro –, Opera Company of Middlebury – La Traviata, Eugen Onegin, L’italiana in Algeri, Madama Butterfly, Thaïs, La Rondine, turandot and Macbeth – , Opéra de Montréal – Lakmé and Faust –, Tulsa Opera – Pearlfishers and Faust –. He has also performed with the Dallas, Minnesota, Orlando and Wolf Trap Opera Companies.
Emmanuel Plasson was the Opera company of Middlebury's music director for five years.
Engagements in Australia included six productions with Opera Australia – La Traviata, Faust, Manon, Orphée aux Enfers, Les pêcheurs de perles and Werther – as well as another production of Manon with Melbourne Opera. Maestro Plasson has also lead a production of Carmen with New Zealand Opera. He has conducted the Adelaide, Melbourne, Western Australian and Australia’s Queensland Symphony Orchestras.
He has returned twice to the National Ballet of Japan conducting Prokofiev’s Cinderella and has also performed with the Nagoya Philharmonic Orchestra. He has conducted Massenet's Werther at the New National Theatre in Tokyo.
Emmanuel Plasson won the Donatella Flick International Conducting Competition in 1994 conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra in London, launching his UK debut.
He subsequently worked with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Ulster Orchestra, Northern Sinfonia, the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden, and, in 2002, made his debut with Opera North in a double-bill of Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges and Stravinsky’s Petrushka.
Other Northern European engagements included two productions of Werther once with the Royal Swedish Opera and also with the Royal Danish Opera. He begins the 2012 New Year in Bergen, conducting the Norwegian premiere of L’étoile by Chabrier with the Bergen Philharmonic and Den Nye Opera in the Mark Lamos production with which he was associated at New York City Opera in 2010.
Maestro Plasson has also conducted three productions with Hamburg Staatsoper – Tales of Hoffmann and La fille du Régiment –.
He appeared with the Aalborg, Aarhus and Prague Symphonies, the Nordwestdeutschen Philharmonie, the Brabants Orkest in the Netherlands and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande.
In his native France he has conducted the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris, Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, Orchestre Régional de Cannes, Orchestre National de Bordeaux, and several productions with the Grand Théâtre d’Avignon. He has further performed twice at the Théâtre du Capitole de Toulouse in productions of Cendrillon and Faust. At Toulon Opera he has conducted Les Contes d’Hoffmann.
Other performances in Southern Europe include a concert with the Orquesta Sinfonica Portuguesa with works by Berlioz, Liszt and Schumann and a production of Lucia di Lammermoor with Catania Opera in Sicily.
In the beginning of his musical career Emmanuel Plasson worked as a Solo-violinist as well as in orchestras around the world. he began formal conducting studies at the Pierre Monteux School in Maine, U.S.A., and continued his training at the Yale School of Music. His discography includes recordings on the EMI and Dynamic labels.