Axel Kober

From 2009 to 2024, Axel Kober served as General Music Director (GMD) at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf/Duisburg, where he made a decisive mark with a broad repertoire ranging from the Baroque to major works of the 20th and 21st centuries. Among his outstanding productions are Alban Berg’s “Wozzeck,” Viktor Ullmann’s “The Emperor of Atlantis,” Benjamin Britten’s “Peter Grimes,” Jean-Philippe Rameau’s “Castor et Pollux,” Leoš Janáček’s “Katja Kabanova,” and Kober’s staging of Wagner’s “Der Ring des Nibelungen” in Düsseldorf and Duisburg, which resulted in a highly acclaimed live recording with the Duisburg Philharmonic.
The Duisburg Philharmonic appointed Kober as its principal conductor in 2017 and as General Music Director from 2019 to 2025. After his first engagements as a conductor in Schwerin and Dortmund, Axel Kober became deputy General Music Director in Mannheim; in 2007, he moved to the Leipzig Opera as music director and artistic director, before becoming General Music Director at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in 2009. Recurring guest conducting engagements have also taken him to the Bayreuth Festival, the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Hamburg State Opera, the Semperoper Dresden, and the Zurich Opera House. In Tokyo, he conducted Wagner’s *Tannhäuser*, and at the Opéra national du Rhin, a new production of Wagner’s *Tristan und Isolde*. As a guest conductor, Axel Kober has a special relationship with the Vienna State Opera, where he made his debut in 2016. In addition to his highly acclaimed “Ring of the Nibelung” in 2019 and an immediate invitation to conduct further “Ring” cycles in 2022, he conducted Strauss’s “Der Rosenkavalier” and “Arabella,” Puccini’s “Tosca” and “Turandot,” and Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 there.
During the 2024.25 season, he conducted Verdi’s “Macbeth,” Humperdinck’s “Hansel and Gretel,” Beethoven’s “Fidelio,” and Wagner’s “Parsifal”; at the Royal Danish Opera in Copenhagen with Wagner’s “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg”; at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin with “Der Rosenkavalier”; and he returned to the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Semperoper Dresden, and the Zurich Opera House.
In concert, Axel Kober has appeared with, among others, the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra, the Bruckner Orchestra Linz, the Dortmund Philharmonic, the Basel Symphony Orchestra, the Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, and the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra. His concert schedule for 2024.25 included performances with the WDR Symphony Orchestra of Cologne, the Badische Staatskapelle Karlsruhe, and the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra.
Following successful productions in recent seasons, such as Verdi’s “Otello”, Janáček’s “Káťa Kabanová”, "Jenůfa" and Berg’s “Wozzeck,” Axel Kober will return to the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in 2026 for two performances of the new production of “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg”.



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