Acclaimed British conductor Jane Glover, named Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2021 New Year’s Honours, 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. 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.
Jane 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, the San Francisco, Houston, St. Louis, Sydney, Cincinnati, and Toronto symphony orchestras, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the Bamberg Symphony, and the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. She has worked with the period-instrument orchestras Philharmonia Baroque, and the Handel and Haydn Society. And she has made frequent appearances at the BBC Proms.
In demand on the international opera stage, Jane 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 Saint Louis, Luminato, Teatro Real, Madrid, Royal Danish Opera, Teatro La Fenice and Detroit Opera. A Mozart specialist, she has conducted all the Mozart operas all over the world regularly 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 and The Magic Flute 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, Figaro and Don Giovanni 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 Saint Louis, Orfeo ed Euridice (Gluck) in Lisbon, Albert Herring with Chicago Opera theater, and Xerxes with Detroit Opera. Among the many operas she conducted while Director of Opera at the Royal Academy of Music were Eugene Onegin, The Rake’s Progress, The Marriage of Figaro, L’incoronazione di Poppea, and the world premiere of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ Kommilitonen! In the current season she will return to Houston Grand Opera for Don Giovanni, which she will also conduct for Cincinnati Opera.
Future and recent-past concert 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), the St Louis Symphony, Houston Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, and the London Mozart Players. She made her debuts with the Chicago Symphony, Montreal’s Orchestre Mètropolitain, the Fort Worth Symphony, and Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. The current season includes debuts with the Baltimore Symphony, Helsinki Philharmonic, as well as returns to the New York Philharmonic, and the Cincinnati, and Toronto Symphonies. She will conduct the Mozart Requiem in a debut with Camerata Salzburg in the 2024/2025 season.
Jane Glover’s discography includes a series of Mozart and Haydn symphonies with the London Mozart Players and various recordings with the London Philharmonic, the Royal Philharmonic, Trinity, Wall Street, and the BBC Singers. She is the author of the critically acclaimed books Mozart’s Women, Handel in London and has recently published Mozart in Italy. 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.
July 2023
Please note: Biographies are based on information provided to the CSO by the artists or their representatives. More current information may be available on websites of the artists or their management.
