Few conductors bring Arthur Fagen’s combination of seasoned craft and musical authority to the podium. With an opera repertory spanning more than 90 works and a career that has taken him from the Metropolitan Opera to the Vienna State Opera, from the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam to concert halls across Asia and South America, Fagen is one of the most versatile and internationally sought-after conductors of his generation.

Born in New York, Arthur Fagen studied at the Curtis Institute under Max Rudolf, and later at the Salzburg Mozarteum with Hans Swarowsky. Early in his career he served as assistant to both Christoph von Dohnanyi at the Frankfurt Opera and James Levine at the Metropolitan Opera, a formative foundation that shaped a conducting style marked by incisive musical intelligence and an instinctive command of large forces.

His leadership roles have spanned continents. He served as Principal Conductor in Kassel and Braunschweg, Chief Conductor of the Flanders Opera of Antwerp and Ghent, and Music Director of the Queens Symphony Orchestra and the Dortmund Philharmonic and Opera. At Dortmund, he led acclaimed new productions of Siegfried, Götterdämmerung, and two complete Ring Cycles, and took the orchestra on a celebrated tour through Holland, Belgium, Austria, and China. From 2010 to 2024, he served as Music Director of the Atlanta Opera, where he built a remarkable tenure distinguished by ambitious programming and artistic excellence, conducting everything from Akhnaten by Philip Glass to Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer, alongside the core Italian and French repertoire. In January 2025, he was named the Atlanta Opera’s Music Director Emeritus, a recognition of his transformative contribution to the company.

On the concert podium, Fagen is a regular presence with orchestras of the highest caliber, including the Czech Philharmonic, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Bergen Philharmonic, the Tokyo Philharmonic, the RAI orchestras, the Dutch Radio Orchestra, and the Jerusalem Symphony. He has appeared at the Prague Spring Festival and the Schleswig-Holstein Festival, and has conducted throughout Italy, Spain, Hungary, Germany, Poland, and across South America.

Arthur Fagen is also a committed recording artist with a long association with the Naxos label. His discography includes the complete symphonies of Bohuslav Martinů and Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies with the Staatskapelle Weimar, and the premiere recording of Bernard Rands‘ opera Vincent. His recording of Martinů’s Piano Concertos was awarded an Editor’s Choice by Gramophone Magazine, while his two recordings with the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, one devoted to Morton Gould and the other spotlighting African-American composers William Dawson Levi and Ulysses Kay, earned widespread critical acclaim. Gramophone praised his „incisive authority,“ while The New York Times lauded his „crucial“ exploration of the repertoire.

A prizewinner of both the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Conductors Competition and the Gino Marinuzzi International Conductors‘ Competition in Italy, Arthur Fagen brings the same competitive edge and intellectual rigor to everything he conducts. He has recorded for BMG, Bayerischer Rundfunk, SFB, and WDR Cologne, and his work continues to be recognized by critics and audiences alike as a model of musical seriousness and interpretive depth.

Arthur Fagen is currently Professor of Orchestral Conducting at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, where he brings his decades of professional experience to the next generation of conductors.