Patrick Summers (United States)

Margaret Alkek Williams Chair

HGO Performances: Summers conducts La traviata, Don Carlos, and Mary Stuart this season. He has conducted more than 45 operas with HGO since joining the Company in 1998.

About the Artist: Named music director in 1998 and artistic and music director in 2011, Summers has been responsible for many of HGO’s important artistic advances, including the formation and development of the Houston Grand Opera Orchestra. As music director of San Francisco Opera Center from 1989 to 1994, he worked extensively training emerging opera artists and led the Center’s touring company, the Western Opera Theater, on five tours of Asia and the Pacific. Summers began conducting SFO main stage productions in the early 1990s and became the company’s principal guest conductor in 1999. Summers has been a valued guest at Opera Australia, returning regularly since he conducted La Cenerentola in 1994. He is a frequent guest at the Metropolitan Opera, where he led Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride and Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor last season. This association began in 1998 with Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus and has included a wide variety of repertoire. He was one of three conductors to lead the Opening Night Celebration for the company’s 125th season, and he has conducted the Metropolitan Opera National Council Audition Competition finals concert on several occasions. His work with living composers has resulted in the world premieres of nearly a dozen new works since he first assisted André Previn on the creation of A Streetcar Named Desire. Many leading singers frequently seek him out to conduct their premiere productions in signature roles, such as Renée Fleming (La traviata), Frederica von Stade (Dead Man Walking, Three Decembers) Susan Graham (The Merry Widow and Dead Man Walking), Marcello Giordani (Il trovatore), Patricia Racette (Madame Butterfly, Tosca, Il trittico, and Don Carlos), Anna Netrebko (I Puritani), and Dmitri Hvorostovsky (Simon Boccanegra).