Arthur Fagen is in great demand as a conductor of symphony and opera in Europe, Asia, South America and the United States. He is a regular guest at the most prestigious opera houses, concert halls, and music festivals at home and abroad. Mr. Fagen has been Professor of Orchestral Conducting at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University since 2008. Additionally, he is Music Director of the Atlanta Opera since 2010.
Mr. Fagen was born in New York where he began his conducting studies with Laszlo Halasz. Further studies continued at the Curtis Institute under the guidance of Max Rudolf, and both at the Salzburg Mozarteum and with Hans Swarowsky. A former assistant of both Christoph von Dohnanyi (Frankfurt Opera) and James Levine (Metropolitan Opera), Mr. Fagen's career has been marked by a string of notable appearances, he has conducted opera productions at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Metropolitan Opera, Munich State Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Staatsoper Berlin, New York City Opera, Theatre Capitole de Toulouse, Bordeaux Opera, Frankfurt Opera, Staatstheater Stuttgart, New Israeli Opera, Baltimore Opera, Edmonton Opera, Spoleto Festival, Teatro Colon Buenos Aires, Teatro Lirico di Cagliari, Stadttheater Bozen, and from 1998 to 2001, Mr. Fagen was invited regularly as Guest Conductor at the Vienna State Opera. On the concert podium, Mr. Fagen has appeared with internationally known orchestras including the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie, the Czech Philharmonic, Munich Radio Orchestra, Tokyo Philharmonic, RAI Orchestras (Torino, Naples, Milano, Roma), the Bergen Philharmonic, Prague Spring Festival, the Dutch Radio Orchestra, Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, to name but a few.
Mr. Fagen has an opera repertory of more than 75 works. He has served as Principal Conductor in Kassel and Brunswick, as Chief Conductor of the Flanders Opera of Antwerp and Ghent, as Music Director of the Queens Symphony Orchestra and a member of the conducting staff of the Chicago LyricOpera.
In 2002/2007 Mr. Fagen was the Music Director of the Dortmund Philharmonic Orchestra and the Dortmund Opera. Following his successful concerts with the Dortmund Philharmonic at the Grosse Festspielhaus in Salzburg, Arthur Fagen and the Dortmund Philharmonic were invited to the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Palais de Beaux Arts in Brussels, and in Salzburg, Beijing and Shanghai. He conducted in that period, among others, new opera productions of Siegfried, Götterdämmerung and two Ring Cycles.
Mr. Fagen conducted a new production of Turandot at the Atlanta Opera in 2007, opening the season with enormous success and inaugurating the new Opera House, the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center. Soon after he conducted in Atlanta the contemporary opera Cold Sassy Tree by Carlisle Floyd. In 2008 he was appointed Professor of Music in instrumental conducting at Indiana University Jacobs School of Musik in Bloomington. The season included engagements with the Israel Symphony Orchestra, Holland Sinfonia, Buenos Aires Philharmonic, Dortmunder Philharmoniker, Sicily and Rome's Symphony Orchestras, Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Opera de Nice, concerts in Spain (Las Palmas, Navarra) and in Taiwan. A CD for Naxos was released in October 2007, Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies with the Staatskapelle Weimar.
Last two seasons Mr. Fagen conducted Beethoven's Fidelio in Portland, Akhnaten by Philip Glass and Wagner's Fliegende Hollaender in Atlanta, as well as a new production of Mozart’s Magic Flute. He conducted the NDR Hannover in Braunschweig and at the Schleswig-Holstein Festival, the Winterthur Orchestra in Switzerland, and has been invited to conduct concerts in Italy, Spain, Poland and South America.
Arthur Fagen was first prizewinner of the "Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Conductors Competition" as well as prizewinner of the "Gino Marinuzzi International Conductors' Competition" in Italy.
Mr. Fagen has recorded for BMG, Bayerischer Rundfunk, SFB and WDR Cologne. He records regularly for Naxos, for whom he has completed the 6 symphonies of Bohuslav Martinu. The recent Naxos recording of Martinu's Piano Concertos has been awarded an Editor's Choice in the March 2010 issue of Gramophone Magazine.