RESIDENT CONDUCTOR

Maestro Karen Keltner, Resident Conductor of San Diego Opera regularly appears with her home company, most recently in 2011 and 2010 as conductor for critically acclaimed productions of Faust and Romeo and Juliet by Gounod. In the 2013 San Diego Opera Season, Keltner will again conduct Saint-Saëns’ Samson and Delilah.

Among the over 35 productions conducted for San Diego Opera, highlights have included Don Quichotte by Massenet, Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers and Carmen, and San Diego Opera premieres of Samson and Delilah by Saint-Saëns and Alban Berg’s Wozzeck. Other notable productions include La bohème, Cosi fan tutte, Salome by Richard Strauss, Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman, and the bel canto favorites, The Barber of Seville, La cenerentola, Don Pasquale, The Italian Girl in Algiers, and The Elixir of Love. Keltner has also conducted performances of many of San Diego Opera’s contemporary works, including the aforementioned Wozzeck, Tobias Picker’s Thérèse Raquin, Carlisle Floyd’s Of Mice and Men and Cold Sassy Tree, Samuel Barber’s haunting Vanessa, A Streetcar Named Desire by André Previn, The Lighthouse by Peter Maxwell Davies, and The Conquistador by San Diego’s own Myron Fink. Keltner also collaborated with the well-known composer Gian Carlo Menotti during his lifetime, in performances of Amahl and the Night Visitors, and The Medium and The Telephone with Menotti as stage director.

During past years, Maestro Keltner has appeared as guest conductor with l’Opéra du Rhin, in the cities of Strasbourg and Nancy in France, The Washington Opera at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC; Pittsburgh Opera, Glimmerglass Opera, The Opera Company of Philadelphia, Seattle Opera, New York City Opera, and the Vancouver and Winnepeg Operas in Canada. She has been a regular guest artist with Opera Carolina in Charlotte, NC, conducting among others, Carmen, Salome, Tosca, Cold Sassy Tree, and led Verdi’s Aida to inaugurate Charlotte’s new Opera House in 2002. Maestro Keltner also opened the 45th season of the Lyric Opera of Kansas City with performances of La bohème. Other guest appearances have been with Austin Lyric Opera, Utah Opera in Salt Lake City, Chautauqua Opera (NY), Orlando Opera (FL), Sacramento Opera, Nashville Opera, and the Opera Theatre of Weston where among others, she premiered the Vermont performances of Rachel Portman’s The Little Prince, based on the well-known story by St. Exupéry.

Summer 2012 will mark Keltner’s fifteenth season with Utah Festival Opera where she has led performances of Robert Ward’s The Crucible, Floyd’s Susannah, and staples of the repertoire including Cavalleria Rusticana and La traviata, Pagliacci, La bohème, Nabucco, Rigoletto, Il trovatore, Aida, and Boris Godunov as well as many of the great American musicals: South Pacific, Carousel, Brigadoon, Fiddler on the Roof, Kismet, 1776, I Do, I Do, The Sound of Music, Man of La Mancha, Most Happy Fella, and Guys and Dolls. In the Utah Festival Opera’s 2012 summer season Keltner will conduct Puccini’s Tosca and the beloved My Fair Lady by Lerner and Loewe.