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It would be wonderful to attend the performance twice and the second time around only look with one’s ears. The music under the Argentine conductor Alejo Pérez [...] was performed with intensity of the highest order. Jürgen Kesting, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

As a conductor, Alejo Pérez possesses an inherent stylistic awareness and the ability to bring every detail of the most complex score to life. This has consistently secured him a firm place on the international opera and concert scene.

In recent years, the conductor has appeared to great acclaim at the Salzburg Festival, at the Wiener Staatsoper, the Semperoper Dresden, and at Teatro Colón. His long-standing artistic ties to the prestigious opera house and concert hall in his hometown of Buenos Aires will culminate in 2026 with his appointment as the new chief conductor of the Orquesta Estable del Teatro Cólon. In May 2026, he will make his entrance there with Beethoven's Symphony No. 6 and Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique, followed by new productions of Otello and Die Walküre.

Alejo Pérez has been a guest with numerous renowned orchestras, such as Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, SWR Symphony Orchestra, NDR Symphony Orchestra, Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and Ensemble Intercontemporain.

In his role as music director of the Flemish Opera, Alejo Pérez has been forming the sonic identity of the Flemish Opera from 2019 to 2025 with titles such as Pelléas et Mélisande, Lohengrin, Don Carlos, Tristan und Isolde and La Clemenza di Tito, and most recently impressed the international critics with his outstanding performances of Salome (directed by Ersan Mondtag) and Wozzeck (Johan Simons). He bid farewell to the company in October 2025 with Parsifal (Susanne Kennedy) and Mahler's Song of the Earth. The new season also features debuts at the Gothenburg Opera with a new production of Jenufa (directed by Nicola Raab) and with the Bilbao Symphony Orchestra at the Teatro Arriaga in a production of Shostakovich's 14th Symphony directed by Calixto Bieito with Anette Dasch and Leigh Melrose. At the Grand Théâtre de Genève, he has already collaborated with Calixto Bieito on the trilogy of War and Peace, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and Khovanshchina.

In addition, engagements have taken him to the Stuttgart Opera (Cherubini’s Medea, The Love for Three Oranges, Werther); Opéra de Lyon (Pelléas et Mélisande, The Stigmatized, GerMANIA, From the House of the Dead), the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma (La Cenerentola, The Nose, Lulu, The Fiery Angel), Tokyo Nikikai Opera (Frau ohne Schatten, Gogo no eiko, Der Freischütz) to the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Tokyo New National Theatre, Opéra de Bastille, the Cologne, Frankfurt, and Leipzig Operas, Norwegian National Opera, Teatr Wielki Warsaw, La Monnaie de Munt, and Teatro Municipal de Santiago.

Between 2009 and 2012 Alejo Pérez served as music director of the Teatro Argentino de La Plata, to which he brought a new lease of life with internationally acclaimed performances. From 2010, he was one of the main conductors at the Teatro Real Madrid in the era of Gerard Mortier, closely working with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Madrid for concerts and celebrated productions of Rienzi, Don Giovanni, Death in Venice, Golijov’s Ainadamar, and Rihm’s Die Eroberung von Mexico.

The polyglot Argentinian studied both composition and conducting in addition to piano in his native Buenos Aires, and later in Karlsruhe with Peter Eötvös. Formative periods at the start of his conducting career included assisting Peter Eötvös, Michael Gielen, as well as Christoph von Dohnányi at the NDR Symphony Orchestra. In 2019, Alejo Pérez was awarded the Konex Platinum Award for his artistic achievements – one of the highest honours in his home country Argentina.

2025/26 season

This biography is to be reproduced without any changes, omissions or additions, unless expressly authorised by the artist management.

Orion Nebula, photographed by Alejo Pérez

“In a way, I always liked the platonic principle of referring to both Music and Astronomy as being part of the core liberal arts, or skills.

Also the infinite possible combinations in music as in the endless space has an irresistible attraction for me.”

Reviews

"A musical feast. In the pit, Alejo Pérez emphasises the smallest details of this demanding and complex score. He chisels the motifs, makes the architecture perfectly legible (...) and takes up the sound material with full hands to make it more than just a casket for the voices: an additional figure that enters into dialogue with them."

Diapason Magazine, Anne Ibos-Augé, 3 June 2025, (Wozzeck, Opera Vlaanderen)

"Berg's uncompromising masterpiece remains a sledgehammer blow even today. Simons and Pérez make it a mad show - in every sense of the word."

De Standaard, Bram van Haelter, 2 June 2025, (Wozzeck, Opera Vlaanderen)

"The visually austere directorial concept allows the music to come to the fore, and you don't have to tell conductor Alejo Pérez twice. Wozzeck is a milestone of expressionist musical theatre and one of the first operas to flirt so explicitly with the limits of tonality. Berg uses extreme dynamics, abrupt silences, screeching contrasts and a tonal language full of abrasive dissonances to bring Wozzeck's psychosis and hopelessness to life. This is where the Argentine conductor goes full steam ahead: the blistering orchestral tension builds culminate in a finale that leaves no soul untouched."

Opernwelt, Lotte Thaler, 18 July 2025 (Wozzeck, Opera Vlaanderen)

“And you have to take your hat off to the Argentinian conductor Alejo Pérez, who lightens up the textures in this monumental work to form a remarkably fluid orchestral framework and soak it with a dramatic tension that never lets down.”

Crescendo-Magazine, Paul-André Demierre, 28 March 2025, (Khovantchina, Grand Theatre de Geneve)

"...The Sächsische Staatskapelle under Argentinian guest conductor Alejo Perez gives the evening great, exciting brilliance. A blooming, glowing cosmos of sound that captivates from the first bar."

MDR Klassik, Michael Ernst, 29 April 2024 (Káťa Kabanová, Semperoper Dresden)

"Alejo Pérez succeeds in shaping Strauss's score transparently despite its massiveness. Where the opera is almost falling apart and the composer pours out his virtuoso, Bavarian-style self-assurance, Alejo Pérez also gives the monkey sugar. In between, the musical partners repeatedly find a rhetorically well-founded, distinct chamber tone and transform the virile, lusciousness of the musical text into delicate, finely-nerved eloquence."

Opernwelt, Jürgen Otten, February 2025, (Salome, Opera Vlaanderen)

“We’re in particularly safe hands musically. Alejo Pérez conducts without artifice and presents Stravinsky’s music in all its honesty. (...) Avoiding artifice, he conducts with pure naturalness and grace. An enthused, spirited Adelaide Symphony Orchestra follow with their usual high degree of accomplishment.”

InReview, Graham Strahle, 2 March 2024 (The Nightingale and Other Fables, Adelaide Festival)

“The Orkest Opera Ballet Vlaanderen was terrific. Alejo Perez’s baton was absolutely in time with the youthful exuberance of this production: daring flourishes of fortepiano in the recitatives, electrifying articulation in the strings, the ‘mafia funeral’ moments for the trumpets – those heralds of Verdi – and, of course, there was pure clarinet seduction.”

bachtrack.com, Eleanor Knight, 12 September 2023 (La Clemenza di Tito, Opera Vlaanderen)

“Pérez succeeds in giving a large ensemble the sound and energy usually found in smaller ensembles.”

forumopera.com, Maxime de Brogniez, 21 September 2023 (La Clemenza di Tito, Opera Vlaanderen)

“Conductor Alejo Pérez has the orchestra striving and yearning, swirling with passion and endlessly tender singing especially in Tristan’s death scene and Isolde’s Love Death.”

KLARA, Sylvia Broeckaert, 23 March 2023 (Tristan und Isolde, Opera Vlaanderen)

“The music then becomes the key word of the performance, first and foremost through the direction of Alejo Pérez. His intense reading of the work (…) is greeted with a standing ovation by the audience.”

Forum Opera, Christophe Rizoud, 26 March 2023 (Tristan und Isolde, Opera Vlaanderen)

“Alejo Pérez, remarkably efficient, alert to every feeling, revealing tenderness as well as murderous madness, an unparalleled creator and lover of sound, is particularly at ease in this musical element.”

letemps.ch, Sylvie Bonier, 16 September 2021 (War and Peace, Grand Théâtre de Genève)

“The crispness and elegance of Alejo Pérez’ conducting style are combined with the kind of inspiring imaginative ability an orchestra needs to test and transcend its boundaries.”

Die Welt, Peter Krause, 21 March 2018 (Concert with the Philharmonische Staatsorchester Hamburg)

“More relaxed and joyful than in the Strauss, the Vienna Philharmonic and the highly-talented Alejo Pérez created a wonderful sound, treading the fine line between penetrating pathos and sentiment without becoming sweet or sensationalist. In Marguerite’s great scene, the conductor and orchestra sparkled. A great achievement.”

Online Musik Magazin, Thomas Tillmann, 20 August 2016

“From Wagner’s opulence to the soft backlight of impressionism, from veristic emotional outbursts to seditiously expressionistic opalescence: under the direction of the magician Alejo Pérez who can turn frogs into princes, the orchestra of l’Opéra de Lyon brought Schreker’s visions to life.”

Le Monde, 17 March 2015 (The Stigmatised)