Guillaume Tourniaire

Guillaume Tourniaire was born in Provence, France. He studied piano and conducting at the Geneva Conservatoire. In 1993 he became musical and artistic director of the singing choir Le Motet de Genève. In 1996 Tourniaire was appointed chief chorus master at Grand Théâtre de Genève, during 2001 and 2002 he led the chorus at Teatro La Fenice in Venice, Italy. Since 2002 he devotes himself exclusively to conducting. He made his conducting debut in 1998 at Grand Théâtre de Genève with Sergey Prokofiev’s opera Betrothal in a Monastery and then at Opéra National de Paris with Igor Stravinsky’s ballet Le Sacre du Printemps (choreography by Pina Bausch). He commenced an intense co-operation with Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, with whom he presented the world premiere of complete original version of Prokofiev’s music (which he himself reconstructed) to Eisenstein’s movie Ivan the Terrible. Next came Mozart’s incidental music for the play Thamos, König in Ägypten by Tobias Philippe Gebler, Mahler’s cantata Das klagende Lied, Prokofiev’s cantata Alexander Nevsky, oratory Gilgamesh by Bohuslav Martinů, Requiem by Dvořák, Amarus and The Eternal Gospel by Janáček and incidental music for Rosamunde by Franz Schubert. He conducted Orchestre de la Suisse Romande in productions of Il barbiere di Siviglia by Rossini and Madame de... by Jean Michel Damase at Grand Théâtre de Genève. Tourniaire guest-co-operated with many great orchestras both within concert and opera repertory, including the Helsinki Philharmonic, Orchestra Regionale Toscana, Orchestra dell’Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome, Teatro Rendano in Cosenza (Les mamelles de Tirésias by Poulenc, Turandot, Tosca), Teatro São Carlos in Lisbon, Orchestra del Teatro La Fenice in Venice, Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf (Don Pasquale), Stadttheater in Osnabrück (Salome, Idomeneo and more), Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie in Bremen, Orchestre National de France, Teatro Politeama Greco in Lecca, Italy (Les Pêcheurs de Perles by Bizet), Teatro Politeama di Catanzaro, Teatro Cilea di Reggio di Calabria (Madama Butterfly) and l’Orchestre National de Lyon.

In 2005 Tourniaire conducted Les Pêcheurs de Perles by Bizet on Teatro La Fenice Japanese tour. In 2006 he presented the world premiere of Les Aveugles, an opera by Swiss composer Xavier Dayer (born 1972) written to the play of the same name by Maurice Maeterlinck, first at Opéra National de Paris, to be followed by Almeida Theatre in London. In 2006 Tourniaire was once more invited to the Opera Festival in Macerata where he conducted Die Zauberflöte by Mozart and in 2007 he was the first to perform on stage Saul by Flavio Testi. He also conducted Rinaldo by Haendel in Seoul. In Teatro Lirico di Cagliari he performed Le bel indifférent by Marco Tutino and Orpheus in the Underworld. With Orchestre de la Suisse Romande Tourniaire recorded complete incidental music for Peer Gynt by Edvard Grieg in the AEON/Harmonia Mundi Company. This recording won numerous awards, among others “Diapason d’Or for 2005”. With Orchestre de la Suisse Romande Tourniaire also recorded the world premiere of Les Cantique des Cantiques, Jour de Fêtes en Suisse and Radio Panoramique by Arthur Honegger with Cascavelles Music Publishers. In October 2007 he recorded the world premiere of Hélène and Nuit Persane by Saint-Saëns for Australian Music Publishers Melba Records in Melbourne. His plans for 2008 include among others Werther in Geneva, a return of Les Aveugles at Opéra National de Paris, The Servant by Marco Tutino at the Macerata Festival, and The Flying Dutchman at Prague State Opera.

Guillaume Tourniaire’s first co-operation with the Prague State Opera (orchestra and chorus) happened in 2005 at the Opera Festival in Macerata, Italy, on the production of Les mamelles de Tirésias by Poulenc and the world premiere of Le bel indifférent by Marco Tutino. He prepared Les mamelles de Tirésias with the SOP ensemble for a Czech premiere, together with a one-act piece La Voix humaine by Poulenc (stage designer and director Pier Luigi Pizzi, on February 22, 2007). Guillaume Tourniaire debuted in Prague in 2006, with Candide by Leonard Bernstein at the Prague State Opera (premiere on May 25). In the 2007/2008 season he was the chief conductor of Prague State Opera where he prepared the concert performance of the complete incidental music by Edvard Grieg to Henrik Ibsen’s drama Peer Gynt (Septembre 13, 2007), the modern-day premieres of the works Nuit Persane and Hélène by Camille Saint-Saëns, also heard in concert performance (February 13, 2008), and Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer (May 29, 2008).