Mihkel Kütson

b. September, 1971 Tallinn

Mihkel Kütson graduated from Tallinn Music High School in 1989 in music theory under René Eespere and continued in choral conducting with Ants Soots at the Estonian Academy of Music. In 1992 he proceeded to study as a DAAD (Deutsche Academische Austauschdienst) scholarship holder in the conducting class of Professor Klauspeter Seibel at the Hamburg University of Music and Theater, which he graduated in 2001. In 2002 he was accepted into the Dirigentenforum funding programme of the German Music Council and in 2006, he was the first conductor to receive the Deutsche Dirigentenpreis (German Conductor Award).

Mihkel Kütson has served as a Chief Conductor at the Vanemuine Theatre in Estonia (1999–2004 and 2008–2011), as a Kapellmeister at the Staatsoper Hannover (2002–2006), and as the Music Director at the Landestheater und Sinfonieorchester Schleswig-Holstein (2007–2012). Since the season 2012/13, Mihkel Kütson holds the positsion of the Music Director at the Theater Krefeld und Mönchengladbach.

Kütson has appeared with numerous orchestras in Germany, including SWR Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart, the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, the NDR Sinfonieorchester, the WDR Sinfonieorchester, the Tonkünstlerorchester Wien, the Dortmund Philharmoniker, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the NDR Radiophilharmonie Hanover, the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, as well as the National Orchestras in Athens and Thessaloniki, Philharmonia Taiwan, the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, and others. As an opera conductor, he has collaborated with the Estonian National Opera, the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, the Landestheater Innsbruck, Hannover State Opera, the Semperoper Dresden, Komische Oper Berlin, and the state theatres in Kassel, Darmstadt, and Oldenburg.

Kütson, who works mainly as a musical theatre conductor, has more than 50 operas in his repertoire, including Nielsen’s Maskarade, Prokofiev’s Cinderella, Tchaikovsky’s Eugen Onegin and Mazeppa, Puccini’s Tosca, La Bohéme, Madame Butterfly, Turandot, Le Villi and Suor Angelica, Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera, Aida, Il trovatore, Stiffelio and Rigoletto, Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana, Leoncavallo’s Il Pagliacci, Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte and La finta giardiniera, R. Strauss’s Elektra, Rosenkavalier and Salome, Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, Wagner’s Rienzi and Lohengrin, Massenet’s Manon, Humperdinck’s Königskinder and Hänsel und Gretel, Weber’s Der Freischütz, Britten’s Peter Grimes, Janáček’s Káťa Kabanová, Thomas’s Hamlet, and Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov among others.

Mihkel Kütson's webpage


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