New York – Domingo Hindoyan will succeed James as a musical director of the Los Angeles Opera and will begin a five -year contract on July 1, 2026.
The 45-year-old Venezuelan-Armenian appointment, the soprano husband Sony Yoncheva, was announced on Friday night. Conlon has been musical director since 2006-07 and said in March 2024 that retire after season 2025-26.
“The is a city known for innovation, assuming risks in productions and musically,” Hindoyan said in New York, where his wife is currently singing in the metropolitan opera. “The idea is to make new pieces, commissions and modern pieces, something to really have a balance between what is classic and go further as we can.”
Hindoyan will carry out two productions in 2026-27 and three in each of the following four seasons, said the president of Los Angeles Opera, Christopher Koelsch. Koelsch expects Hindoyan to lead the works with Yoncheva, who has not sung a production staged in Los Angeles opera.
Like other companies, the Opera has fought with greater costs after the pandemic and discarded a planned pair of premieres of the world over finance. Tenor and driver Plácido Domingo It was a key figure in the collection of funds for the company as general director from 2003 to 19.
“Part of my work as a musical director and the work of any musician is really to take care of the art form as much as we can,” said Hindoyan, “not only on stage, not only study at home (but also) the connection with the community and the connection with donors.”
Hindoyan was born in Caracas, played violin and is the product of the system, the Venezuelan music education system that was fundamental in the careers of Gustavo Dudamel and Rafael Payare. He was an assistant to Daniel Barenboim in the state opera of Berlin Unter den Linden.
“Given the extremely demanding standards of Barenboim, I was impressed to have that job and stay in that job,” Koelsch said. “And then I saw a performance of ‘Tosca’ and I immediately surprised the elegance of the baton technique and the type of absolute clarity of what I was transmitting.”
Hindoyan has been the main director of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic since the 2021-22 season. First he performed the opera of Los Angeles last November at the “Roméo et Juliette” of Gounod.
“There is a kind of warmth and natural charisma for him. In my experience, he almost always convinces the best people,” Koelsch said. “The ‘Roméo’ race was a kind of proof of how they resonated those qualities within our building, how it worked with the orchestra and choir and administration and the public.”
