Robert Houssart
© Zach
‘Rhythmic swing and precision’
‘The direction entrusted to Robert Houssart is precise and measured. Everything is clear and well controlled, without weakening the Dantesque effects of Adès’ composition which take hold of the audience'
Lara Othman, Olyrix, The Exterminating Angel, Opéra national de Paris
Robert Houssart has brought the improvisatory flexibility of his early organ training to opera and new music. He served as Resident Conductor at Royal Danish Opera until 2024, where he conducted the world premiere of Hans Abrahamsen’s The Snow Queen, and enjoys a close relationship with new music ensemble Athelas Sinfonietta Copenhagen.
Houssart made his debut with the Australian premiere of Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre at the Adelaide Festival, and early in his career worked at La Monnaie, English National Opera, Opera North and Opéra Comique, as well as Theater an der Wien, where he conducted the world premiere of Anno Schreier's Hamlet. Since 2014 he has worked regularly with Royal Danish Opera and Royal Danish Ballet, and has conducted more than 200 performances there, including new operas such as Louise Alenius’s Manualen, Thomas Adès’s The Exterminating Angel and Powder Her Face, and David Bruce’s Nothing, alongside core repertoire including Mozart, Strauss and Wagner, and his advocacy of Entartete Musik.
Alongside new music, Houssart’s repertoire is wide-ranging. He has conducted Mozart and Wagner at Longborough Festival, Bernstein with the Hallé, Puccini with Opera North and Strauss at Luzerner Theater, as well as working on baroque music projects for the Yorke Trust, including Handel’s Theodora and Rameau’s Castor et Pollux. In the coming seasons, debuts and returns include Sächsische Staatsoper Dresden, Opéra de Paris, Opéra National du Rhin and Opernhaus Zürich.
‘I think of orchestral pieces as fantastical animals that start to breathe when we begin to play them. You’re in an enclosure with this mythical beast, trying to understand it, touch it and not let it bite you’
