Acclaimed British conductor Jane Glover, named Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2021 New Year’s Honors, has been Music of the Baroque’s music director since 2002. She made her professional debut at the Wexford Festival in 1975, conducting her own edition of Cavalli’s LʼEritrea.
She joined Glyndebourne in 1979 and was music director of Glyndebourne Touring Opera from 1981 until 1985. She was artistic director of the London Mozart Players from 1984 to 1991, and has also held principal conductorships of both the Huddersfield and the London Choral Societies. From 2009 until 2016, she was director of opera at the Royal Academy of Music, where she is now the Felix Mendelssohn Visiting Professor. She was recently visiting professor of opera at the University of Oxford, her alma mater.
Glover has conducted all the major symphony and chamber orchestras in Britain, as well as orchestras in Europe, the United States, Asia and Australia. In recent seasons, she has appeared with the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Bamberg Symphony and the San Francisco, Houston, St. Louis, Sydney, Cincinnati and Toronto symphony orchestras. She has worked with the period-instrument ensembles Philharmonia Baroque and Handel & Haydn Society. She also has appeared regularly at the BBC Proms.
In demand on the international opera stage, Glover has appeared with numerous companies, including the Metropolitan Opera, Royal Opera, Covent Garden, English National Opera, Glyndebourne, the Berlin Staatsoper, Glimmerglass Opera, New York City Opera, Opera National de Bordeaux, Opera Australia, Chicago Opera Theater, Opera National du Rhin, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Luminato, Teatro Real in Madrid, Royal Danish Opera and Teatro La Fenice. A Mozart specialist, she has conducted all the Mozart operas all over the world since she first performed them at Glyndebourne in the 1980s, and her core operatic repertoire also includes Monteverdi, Handel and Britten.
Highlights of recent seasons include The Magic Flute with the Metropolitan Opera, Alcina with Washington Opera, L'elisir d'amore for Houston Grand Opera, Medea for Opera Omaha, Così fan tutte for Lyric Opera of Kansas City, The Turn of the Screw, Jephtha and Lucio Silla in Bordeaux, The Rape of Lucretia, A Midsummer Nightʼs Dream, Cosí fan tutte and The Marriage of Figaro at the Aspen Music Festival, Gluck’s Armide and Iphigenie en Aulide with Met Young Artists and Juilliard, Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute at Opera Theatre of St. Louis and Eugene Onegin, The Rake’s Progress, The Marriage of Figaro, L’incoronazione di Poppea and the world premiere of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ Kommilitonen! at the Royal Academy of Music. In the 2020-21 season she debuted with Minnesota Opera (Albert Herring), while next season she returns to the Metropolitan Opera and Houston Grand Opera to conduct The Magic Flute.
Future and recent past engagements include her continuing seasons with Music of the Baroque in Chicago, her returns to the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra — both at Severance Hall as well as the Blossom Music Festival, the Houston Symphony, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s (at Carnegie Hall) and the London Mozart Players. In the 2019-20 season, she made debuts with the Bremen Philharmonic and the Malaysia Philharmonic. In the 2021-22 season, she will make her debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Montreal’s Orchestre Mètropolitain.
Glover’s discography includes a series of Mozart and Haydn symphonies with the London Mozart Players and recordings of Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Britten and Walton with the London Philharmonic, the Royal Philharmonic and the BBC Singers. She is the author of the critically acclaimed books Mozartʼs Women and Handel in London. She holds a personal professorship at the University of London, is a fellow of the Royal College of Music, an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Music and the holder of several honorary degrees. In 2020, she was awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Gamechanger Award for her work in breaking new ground for other female conductors.
June 2021
