Pierre Vallet

Conductor Pierre Vallet is renowned throughout the world for his superb musicianship, which has led him to work regularly with the world’s foremost musicians and opera houses.

Pierre made his debut in Tokyo conducting Otello with Tokyo Opera Nomori in 2006. Recent operatic engagements include Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and Gounod’s Faust at the Metropolitan Opera, New York; Faust at the Gran Teatro del Liceu, Barcelona; Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle with Matthias Goerne and the Saito Kinen Festival Orchestra on its debut tour of China; and Madama Butterfly at Tokyo Bunka Kaikan.

Elsewhere Pierre has conducted Tannhäuser at L’Opéra national de Paris; Otello, Eugene Onegin and Tannhäuser at Tokyo Opera Nomori; and Massenet’s Manon at the Bolshoi in Moscow.

Opera projects in 2013/14 include La Juive for The Göteborg Opera in Sweden with director Günter Krämer, and Hänsel & Gretel at the 2014 Saito Kinen Festival Matsumoto.

Pierre Vallet has enjoyed a long-term musical partnership with Seiji Ozawa working closely with him on some forty operatic productions and concerts throughout Japan, the US and Europe, encompassing a large and diverse repertoire. At the Saito Kinen Festival Matsumoto he has conducted Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia and Humperdink’s Hänsel & Gretel, and has collaborated on many other productions including, most recently, Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges and L’heure espagnole, directed by Laurent Pelly.

Pierre’s symphonic work includes several appearances at the Spoleto Festival USA, and he is a regular guest with the Greenwich Village Orchestra. Repertoire conducted in Spoleto includes works by Fauré, Roussel, Beethoven, Respighi, and Mendelssohn, while in New York recent work includes a Wagner gala with soprano Christine Goerke, Elgar’s Sea Pictures with Jennifer Johnson Cano, Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 6, Beethoven Symphony No. 4 and Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy.

Pierre is a long-serving member of the Metropolitan Opera, first as a pianist and coach and later joining the roster of staff conductors, where he has worked closely with conductors including James Levine, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Bertrand de Billy, Ed Gardner, Marco Armiliato, Jiri Belohlávek, Jesús Lopez-Cobos, Alain Altinoglu and Louis Langrée.

As a pianist, he has performed in duo recitals in both the US and Europe with some of the world’s most renowned singers, including Natalie Dessay, Maria Guleghina, Ying Huang and Dmitri Hvorostovsky. Most recently he appeared at the Vienna State Opera with Roberto Alagna.

Pierre Vallet has an affinity with choruses, not just in the opera house, but also in the great choral works, demonstrated by his work as chorus master for Britten’s War Requiem (Saito Kinen Festival Orchestra at Carnegie Hall), La Damnation de Faust, Mahler Symphony No. 2, and Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder. He has also appeared as conductor and lecturer at the choral festival Tokyo Cantat, where he conducted the closing concert in a program of works by Debussy, Ravel and Kodaly.

A committed educator, Pierre Vallet is a renowned lecturer and guest teacher at the world’s premiere training institutions. He has been a regular visitor to the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program at the Metropolitan Opera, the Steans Music Institute at the Ravinia Festival in Chicago, the Tanglewood Music Center, the Wolf Trap Opera company, and the Houston Grand Opera Studio.

Pierre studied conducting and the theory of phenomenology in music with Sergiu Celibidache, and piano at the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris and the Conservatoire Nationale Supérieur de Musique de Paris, as well as with Louis Hiltbrand in Geneva and Peter Feuchtwanger in London.