During his studies in Detmold and Vienna, Matthias Foremny won the 1995 International Conducting
Competition “Prague Spring.” Shortly thereafter, his professional career began: from 1998 to 2000 he
served as First Kapellmeister and Deputy General Music Director at the Landestheater Detmold,
before being appointed First Kapellmeister at the Komische Oper Berlin in 2000. There, in addition to
conducting a wide repertoire, he led the premieres of Britten’s Turn of the Screw (awarded the
Bavarian Theatre Prize) and Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre, which attracted international attention. From
2003 to 2012 he was General Music Director and Opera Director at the Mecklenburg State Theatre
Schwerin. In 2012, he was awarded the German Music Prize Echo Klassik.

Matthias Foremny attracts attention both as a concert conductor and in the opera field. As a regular
guest conductor, he is affiliated with the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, the SWR Symphony
Orchestra, the MDR Symphony Orchestra, and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra Helsinki, with
whom he collaborates not only in concerts but also in radio and CD productions. His concert
engagements have taken him to the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester
Berlin, the WDR Symphony Orchestra, the Stuttgart Philharmonic, the Dresden Philharmonic, the
Staatskapelle Weimar, the Nuremberg Philharmonic, the Guangzhou and Shanghai Symphony
Orchestras, and the Athens State Orchestra, as well as other orchestras throughout Europe, Asia, and
Australia.

Since 2014, Matthias Foremny has been a professor of conducting and orchestral direction at the
Leipzig University of Music and Theatre Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy.
From 2013 to 2019 he served as Chief Conductor of the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra and was a
regular guest at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Hamburg State Opera, and the Cologne Opera.
Since 2011, Matthias Foremny has been engaged at the Leipzig Opera as First Permanent Guest
Conductor.

In the 2025/2026 season, he will conduct the Gewandhaus Orchestra in new productions
of Mozart’s Così fan tutte and Coming Up for Air (Bernd Franke/world premiere). In the concert
sector, he will also appear this season with the Munich Radio Orchestra, among others. A radio
production with the SWR Symphony Orchestra is planned afterward.

Matthias Foremny is a laureate of the Forum Dirigieren (German Conducting Award) of the German Music Council.