Daniel Cohen has been the General Music Director of the Staatstheater
Darmstadt since 2018 and recently extended his tenure through the 2026-27
season.
Highlights in Darmstadt include Wagner’s Lohengrin (dir. Andrea
Moses), Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann (dir. Dirk Schmeding),
Strauss’s Elektra and Berg’s Wozzeck (dir. Karsten
Wiegand), Verdi’s Otello (dir. Paul-Georg Dittrich), Berg’s Lulu,
and Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde (both directed by Eva-Maria
Höckmayr).
Cohen maintains regular artistic ties with Berlin’s opera houses. In the
2015-16 season, he served as Kapellmeister at the Deutsche Oper
Berlin, conducting numerous performances of Così fan tutte, Don
Giovanni, and La Traviata, among others, and has returned
regularly ever since - most recently for the widely praised world premiere
of Giorgio Battistelli’s Il Teorema di Pasolini. Die Deutsche
Bühne wrote: “Conductor Daniel Cohen and the Deutsche Oper orchestra
perform (...) at the quality level of a top international opera house.”
At the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, where he debuted in the 2016-17
season with Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps, he has since
returned for Il barbiere di Siviglia, Britten’s The Turn of
the Screw, and others.
Further operatic engagements have taken him to the Canadian Opera Company
(La clemenza di Tito, dir. David Alden), the Macerata Opera
Festival (The Magic Flute, dir. Graham Vick), the Israeli Opera (Wozzeck
and Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk), Teatro Massimo di
Palermo (Idomeneo and A Midsummer Night’s Dream), Theater
Essen (Wozzeck), and Den Norske Opera in Oslo (The Barber of
Seville and The Marriage of Figaro).
In July 2025, he conducted the highly acclaimed Italian premiere of
Britten’s Owen Wingrave at the Festival della Valle d’Itria.
In the 2025-26 season, he will make his debuts with the English National
Opera in London and Manchester in Britten’s Albert Herring, the
New National Theatre Tokyo in Strauss’s Die Fledermaus, the
Musikkollegium Winterthur and the Staatsorchester Stuttgar. He will also
return to the Israel Philharmonic and Munich Symphony Orchestras.
In the symphonic field, Cohen has conducted the Staatskapelle Berlin, the
Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Dresden Philharmonic, the Munich Symphony
Orchestra, the MDR Symphony Orchestra, the Helsinki Philharmonic, the RTÉ
National Symphony Orchestra (Dublin), the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale
Fiorentino, the Israel Philharmonic, the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne,
the Camerata Salzburg, and the Basel Symphony Orchestra, among others.
In 2021, he recorded Hindemith’s Clarinet Concerto for Orfeo with
the Frankfurt Radio Orchestra and soloist Sharon Kam.
Cohen’s close association with the Bregenz Festival began in 2019 with
his debut conducting the Vienna Symphony Orchestra in Massenet’s Don
Quichotte, directed by Mariame Clément. The production, later
released on DVD and broadcast by the BBC, won the 2020 Austrian Music
Theater Prize for “Best Overall Opera Production”. He returned in 2021 for
Rigoletto and in 2022 and 2024 to conduct the Akademieorchester
Bregenz.
A strong advocate for contemporary music, Cohen was Pierre Boulez’s
assistant at the Lucerne Festival (2009-2010) and participated in the
Lucerne Festival Academy Composer Project (2011-2013), making his debut at
the KKL under Boulez’s guidance.
Trained at the Royal Academy of Music in London, Cohen was for many years
a violinist in the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, where he also served as
assistant to Daniel Barenboim. He was a Dudamel Fellow with the Los
Angeles Philharmonic in 2013-14 and a Conducting Fellow at the Tanglewood
Music Festival in 2014.
August 2025