In Thursday’s (1/19) Pioneer Press (St. Paul, Minnesota), Rob Hubbard writes, “Music director is a title that’s been missing from the Minnesota Opera’s personnel list for decades. After a 13-year search, the company has chosen Michael Christie, the 37-year-old music director of the Phoenix Symphony and former head of New York’s Brooklyn Philharmonic. While conducting performances of three recent Minnesota Opera productions, Christie established a strong rapport with the company’s orchestra and impressed management enough to offer him the long-vacant position.” Christie worked on Minnesota Opera productions of La Traviata, Wuthering Heights, and Silent Night in 2011, all of which were deemed successes. “Christie has won awards for his programming of new music in Phoenix, where he’s been since 2005. He’ll be completing his tenure there next season on a part-time basis while going back and forth between Minnesota and Arizona. His summers have been spent heading the Colorado Music Festival since 2001. (The Denver Post named him ‘Musician of the Year’ in 2010.) While this is his first position as an opera company’s music director, opera has always been part of his career.”
Posted January 19, 2012
