Fabrice Bollon
Composer / conductor
Fabrice Bollon is an internationally acclaimed composer and conductor.
Born in Paris in 1965, he studied with Michael Gielen and Nikolaus Harnoncourt at the Salzburg Mozarteum, perfected his craft with Georges Prêtre and worked closely for years as with the composer Mauricio Kagel. After assisting at the Salzburg Festival, he was appointed principal conductor of the Flanders Symphony Orchestra (Bruges) and deputy music director in Chemnitz before becoming general music director at Freiburg Theatre in 2008.
As a visiting conductor he has toured Japan, New Zealand, France, Italy, Spain and Russia. His production of Wagner’s Ring and especially his many CD recordings of major operas for the CPO label (most recently Francesca da Rimini by the Mascagni pupil Riccardo Zandonai) have drawn rousing reviews from the international press.
His compositions have been premièred by such musicians as Johannes Moser and Wolfgang Schmidt (cello), the Swingle Singers, Christian Schmidt (organ), the Southwest German RSO in Stuttgart and the German Radio Philharmonic in Saarbrücken.
His opera Oscar und die Dame in Rosa, after a novella by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, ran for 12 sold-out performances in Freiburg. The German newspaper Die Welt praised it as a ‘rare case of a truly family-friendly yet thought-provoking comedy’, while the Stuttgarter Zeitung called it ‘an opera through and through. [...] Bollon is a true master of transformation and a composer of great tact and assured taste’.