Tragically torn from life: The conductor collapsed during an opera performance in the Munich National Theater. The Bavarian State Opera announced that Stefan Soltesz died shortly afterwards.
Stefan Soltesz, here in the opera house of the Aalto Theater in Essen, was 73 years old
The Bavarian State Opera announces the death of Stefan Soltesz with horror and great sadness, one said Speaker with. The 73-year-old suffered a collapse in the Munich National Theater on Friday evening while conducting the comic opera “The Silent Woman”.
“The news about the collapse and the death of Stefan Soltesz makes me deeply sad,” said director Serge Dorny, according to the spokesman. “We are losing a gifted conductor. I am losing a good friend. My thoughts are with his wife Michaela.”
Soltesz, who was born in Hungary and emigrated to Vienna in 1956, studied conducting, composition and piano at the University of Music and Performing Arts there. After stints as a conductor in Vienna and Graz and as a musical assistant to Karl Böhm, Christoph von Dohnányi and Herbert von Karajan at the Salzburg Festival, he was conductor of the Hamburg State Opera, the Deutsche Oper Berlin and general music director at the Braunschweig State Theater.
< p>From 1992 to 1997 the Austrian was chief conductor of the Flemish Opera in Antwerp/Gent, from 1997 to 2013 general music director of the Essen Philharmonic and artistic director of the Aalto Music Theatre, as the Bavarian State Opera further announced.
cw/kle (dpa, rtr)