Constantin Trinks’ 2023/24 season opens with a return to the Royal Swedish Opera for a revival of Kirsten Harms’ production of Madama Butterfly. He also returns to Norwegian Opera for La Traviata, Teatro di San Carlo in Napoli for Don Giovanni, and Bayerische Staatsoper for Fidelio, Parsifal, and Die Fledermaus. He makes his long-awaited debut at Glyndebourne Festival, originally scheduled to take place during the pandemic, conducting Die Zauberflöte with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

Juggling a busy diary of operatic engagements with symphonic performances, Trinks returns to Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg this season to conduct Nijinsky, a John Neumeier production featuring Shostakovich’s Symphony 11 and excerpts from Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade. This follows his hugely successful debut last season, conducting their Beethoven Project which included staged performances of Beethoven’s Symphony 7.

Recent orchestral successes include subscription concerts with Filarmonica Arturo Toscanini, National Orchestra of Belgium (concerts at BOZART Brussels and Grosses Festspielhaus Salzburg), George Enescu Philharmonic Orchestra. Previous highlights include Dresden Philharmonic, Vancouver Symphony, Salzburg Mozarteum at the Grosses Festspielhaus in Salzburg, Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, and Munich Philharmonic.

Highly regarded as one of today’s most prominent Wagner conductors, Trinks celebrated the Wagner Bicentenary conducting Der fliegende Holländer in Dresden, Tannhäuser in Tokyo, Strasbourg, Deutsche Oper Berlin and Frankfurt, as well as Wagner’s early opera Das Liebesverbot at the Bayreuth Festival and for Opéra du Rhin in Strasbourg. In 2019/20, he conducted Lohengrin at Prague National Theatre. In 2021/22, he conducted Tristan und Isolde for Staatsoper Hannover, and returned to Bayreuth Festival for a gala concert. More recently in summer 2023, Trinks conducted the complete Der Ring des Nibelungen, Tristan und Isolde, and Parsifal at Sofia National Opera.

Trinks is a very popular guest at Bayerische Staatsoper, where his titles over the years include Lohengrin, Parsifal, Les contes d’Hoffmann, Die Entführung aus dem Serail, and Così fan tutte, to name only a few. He also conducted their production of Arabella, starring Anja Harteros, which toured to the Münchner Opernfestspiele and Théâtre des Champs Elysées in Paris.

Recent highlights elsewhere include productions at Royal Opera House London (multiple revivals of Don Giovanni), Oper Köln (La bohème, Rusalka), Staatsoper Hannover (Tristan und Isolde, La Juive), Leipzig Oper (Lohengrin, La Traviata),  Theater an der Wien (Fiery Angel, and Euryanthe), Royal Swedish Opera (Die Walküre), Seattle Opera (The Turn of the Screw), Teatro dell’Opera di Roma (Die lustige Witwe), Teatro di San Carlo (Tristan und Isolde), Sächsische Staatsoper Dresden (Der fliegende Holländer), New National Theatre Tokyo (Le nozze di Figaro, Salome), Opernhaus Zürich (The Turn of the Screw), Opéra du Rhin Strasbourg (Salome) and Opéra National de Paris (Die Zauberflöte).

His award-winning discography includes the world premiere recording of Wilhelm Petersen’s Symphony No. 3 with Frankfurt Radio Symphony on Profil label, which received an Opus Klassik award for Symphonic Recording of the Year in 2023. His live recording of Hans Rott’s Symphony No. 1 with Mozarteum Orchestra, also on Profil, received an ECHO Klassik award in 2017. Trinks’ other albums include recordings with Vienna Radio Symphony (Beethoven concerti with Michael Korstick), Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin (Pfitzner’s Piano Concerto Op. 31 with Markus Becker, and Braunfels’ Tag- und Nachtstücke on Hyperion).

Trinks joined the Saarländisches Staatstheater in 2002 as Kapellmeister, ascending within a few years into the position of interim music director from 2006 to 2009.  Between 2009-2012, Trinks held the position of Music Director at the Staatstheater Darmstadt, where his productions included not only his first critically acclaimed Der Ring des Nibelungen, but also Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Parsifal, Fidelio, Aida and the world premiere of Orff’s early work Gisei (available on DVD) in combination with De temporum fine comoedia.

Born in Karlsruhe, Constantin Trinks studied conducting at the Conservatory of his hometown with Wolf-Dieter Hauschild, and piano with Günter Reinhold.