The British conductor Graeme Jenkins is known for his wide-ranging repertoire, from early baroque to contemporary music, and for his many years of experience in the field of opera. He has conducted approx. 112 different works in 199 opera productions at opera houses such as the Royal Opera in Covent Garden, the Glyndebourne Festival, English National Opera, Welsh National Opera, Scottish Opera and Opera North, the Grand Théâtre de Genève, the Bavarian State Opera, the Vienna State Opera, Opéra national de Paris, Deutsche Oper Berlin, De Nederlandse Opera, the Cologne Opera, the Theater an der Wien, the Hungarian State Opera in Budapest, the Royal Danish Opera, Royal Swedish Opera, Opera Australia, Canadian Opera Company and Glimmerglass.

In 2017, he made his debut at the Teatro Nacional de Sao Carlos with Tristan und Isolde and has since conducted Peter Grimes, Gluck’s Alceste, Parsifal, Rusalka, Iolanta, Der fliegende Holländer, concerts with Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem and most recently, in the 2023/24 season, Beethoven’s Fidelio and concerts with Strauss’ Alpine Symphony.

In the current season, he returns to Lisbon for concerts with Britten’s War Requiem and Schumann’s Scenes from Goethe’s Faust.

In spring 2025, Greame Jenkins will make his house debut at the Hamburg State Opera with Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades.

Graeme Jenkins made his debut at the Vienna State Opera in 2005 with the acclaimed Willy Decker production of Britten’s Billy Budd, with Simon Keenlyside in the leading role. In the following years he conducted further productions there, including Jenufa, Der fliegende Holländer, Billy Budd, Lohengrin, Katja Kabanova, The Tempest, Johannes Maria Staud’s opera Die Weiden, Il barbiere di Siviglia, Cavalleria Rusticana, Pagliacci, Madama Butterfly, Peter Grimes, La fanciulla del West and Otello, both in Vienna and on a guest appearance at the State Opera in Seoul.

He began his operatic career as Music Director of Glyndebourne Touring Opera from 1986-1991. Between 1994-2013, Maestro Jenkins was Music Director of the Dallas Opera and in this position oversaw the relocation of the Dallas Opera to the Winspear Opera House, designed by Lord Foster as part of the Dallas Center for Performing Arts. Highlights of his career at Dallas Opera include conducting the complete Ring Cycle by Richard Wagner, at the time the youngest British conductor to do so, and other successful productions such as Wozzeck, Jenufa, Ariodante, Lohengrin, Boris Godunov, Queen of Spades, Tristan and Isolde, Lucia di Lammermoor, The Magic Flute and others.

Graeme Jenkins is also a highly sought-after conductor in the concert field and has worked with orchestras such as the symphony orchestras in Minnesota, Dallas, Houston, St. Louis, Colorado, Utah, Santa Rosa, San Antonio, Toronto, the West Australian Symphony Orchestra (WASO), the Melbourne and Canberra Symphony Orchestra, the Orquestra Gulbenkian, Orquestra Nacional do Porto, Real Filharmonía de Galicia, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Orchestre National de Lyon, Orchestre Symphonique de Toulon, Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo, Rotterdams Philharmonisch Orkest, Nederlands Philharmonisch Orkest, the Danish National Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Danish Orchestra, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Gürzenich-Orchester Köln, Duisburger Philharmoniker, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Wiener Symphoniker, ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien and many others. Graeme Jenkins recorded a CD of works by Paul Juon with the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra for JPC and a CD of Verdi arias with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the Chinese soprano Liping Zhang for Deutsche Grammophon.

Graeme Jenkins studied conducting at the Royal College of Music in London with Norman Del Mar and Sir David Willcocks, having previously studied music at the University of Cambridge.