Marc Minkowski was born on October 4, 1962. He is a French conductor who is especially known for performing classical music from the French Baroque period. From 2013 to 2017, he served as the musical director of Mozartwoche in Salzburg, Austria. From 2016 to 2021, he was the general director of the Opéra national de Bordeaux. Minkowski holds the title of Chevalier du Mérite.
Life and career
Marc Minkowski was born in Paris. His maternal grandmother, Edith Wade, was a violinist. His mother, Mary Anne Minkowski, was born in the United States, and his father, Alexandre Minkowski, was a Polish-French doctor who taught about children's health and helped create the field of neonatology. Minkowski began his musical career as a bassoonist in two ensembles: René Clemencic's Clemencic Consort and Philippe Pierlot's Ricercar Consort.
In 1982, Minkowski founded "Les Musiciens du Louvre," an orchestra dedicated to performing French Baroque music. The group has performed works by composers such as Marin Marais (opera Alcyone), Jean-Joseph Mouret (Les amours de Ragonde), Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Jean-Baptiste Lully (Phaëton at Opéra National de Lyon), and Jean-Philippe Rameau (Hippolyte et Aricie). The ensemble has also revived lesser-known operas by George Frideric Handel, including Teseo, Amadigi, Riccardo Primo, and Ariodante, as well as operas by Christoph Willibald Gluck, such as Armide (at the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles), Alceste, and Iphigénie en Tauride (at the English Bach Festival at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden).
After 1996, Les Musiciens du Louvre moved to Grenoble, where they are associated with the Maison de la Culture de Grenoble.
Minkowski's career has expanded from a focus on Baroque music to a broader range of operas. He conducted Mozart's Idomeneo in 1996 at the Opéra National de Paris and performed Die Entführung aus dem Serail at the Salzburg Festival. He has also conducted Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro at the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence and Mitridate, re di Ponto at the Salzburg Festival, Handel's Giulio Cesare in Amsterdam, Paris, and Zürich (with Cecilia Bartoli), and Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno in Zürich. He has conducted Donizetti's La Favorite in Zürich and Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride, among others.
Minkowski has also performed and recorded works by Jacques Offenbach, including Orphée aux Enfers, La belle Hélène, and La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein, as well as the Concerto militaire for cello and orchestra in G, performed with Jérôme Pernoo (cello).
In addition to Les Musiciens du Louvre, Minkowski has worked with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, and the Staatskapelle Dresden. In 2008, he became the music director of Sinfonia Varsovia.
His recordings are available on Erato, EMI's Virgin Classics, and Naïve Records. In 2014, Naïve released a recording of the original version of Der fliegende Holländer and the first recording of Le Vaisseau fantôme by Dietsch, conducted by Minkowski.
Minkowski received the Prize XVIIe in 1988 for his recordings of Lully-Molière: Les Comédies ballets performed by Les Musiciens du Louvre (Erato Records).