Nathalie Stutzmann

Contralto and conductor Nathalie Stutzmann is well-known for her charismatic performances on the stage and at the podium. After establishing an international career on the recital, concert, and opera stages, she has become a regular guest conductor with ensembles across North America and Europe, and founded and conducted the Orfeo 55 orchestra. In 2021, Stutzmann was heard singing and conducting Orfeo 55 on the album Contralto and was named the music director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, becoming only the second woman to hold the directorship of a major American orchestra. In 2024, Stutzmann issued her debut recording as conductor of the Atlanta Symphony with a recording of Dvořák's Symphony No. 9 ("From a New World") and American Suite. Stutzmann was born on May 6, 1965, in Suresnes, France, a suburb of Paris. She began to make music at an early age, studying the piano and bassoon, along with voice lessons with her mother, Christiane Stutzmann, who is an accomplished chamber musician on the piano and bassoon. She studied at the Conservatoire à rayonnement régional du Grand Nancy and then the École Nationale in Paris, where her teachers included Hans Hotter, Christa Ludwig, and Daniel Ferro. An early triumph came in 1983 when Stutzmann won the Brussels Vocal Competition. She made her professional debut at the Salle Pleyel in Paris in 1985 in a performance of Bach's Magnificat, BWV 243. The following year, Stutzmann garnered attention for her recital debut in Nantes and her operatic debut at the Paris Opera in a performance of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. A 1989 recording of Handel's Amadigi di Gaula, HWV 11 under Marc Minkowski helped launch Stutzmann's international performing and recording career. Her opera repertoire leans heavily on French opera, as when she played Geneviève in Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, but it also includes Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, Handel's Giulio Cesare in Egitto, and Wagner's Das Rheingold, among many others. Her concert works take in the major works of Bach, Vivaldi, and Mahler. In recital, Stutzmann has received accolades for her interpretations of art songs of the 19th and 20th centuries and German lieder. While at school, she developed an interest in conducting but found the field unwelcoming for a female conductor. This did not dissuade her; rather, it pushed her to develop the skill. While singing was an obvious career path for her, Stutzmann also studied with several prominent conductors: Seiji Ozawa (while performing with him in Japan), Sir Simon Rattle, and Jorma Panula, to whom Rattle referred Stutzmann for continued training. In 2009, she founded the Orfeo 55 chamber orchestra, conducting and soloing with the group until its dissolution in 2019. Stutzmann has recorded for all of the major labels, signing an exclusive contract with Warner Classics/Erato in 2014. She has won several awards for her recordings, including the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik and Diapason d'Or. Among her most popular albums are recordings of Schumann's lieder, Schubert's Winterreise, and Debussy's Le Martyre de Saint Sebastien: Stutzmann earned a Grammy nomination for the latter. Her first major conducting appointment was as the principal guest conductor of the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra from 2017 until 2020. Her performances with this group were met with positive reviews from audiences and critics. From 2018 to 2023, Stutzmann was the chief conductor of the Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra, the first woman to hold this post. She was also the first woman to hold a conducting post with the Philadelphia Orchestra, serving as the principal guest conductor from 2021 to 2024. In 2021, she conducted Orfeo 55 and sang on the album Contralto, which featured several world-premiere recordings. That year, she was named music director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, succeeding long-time director Robert Spano and becoming only the second woman to hold the directorship of a major American orchestra. She has also taken the seemingly natural path as an opera conductor; after the cancellation of her Metropolitan Opera debut in the 2021-2022 season (Gluck's Iphigenie en Tauride), Stutzmann earned critical praise for her 2023 debut leading productions of Mozart's Don Giovanni and Die Zauberflöte. That year, she also made her conducting debut at the Bayreuth Festival with Tannhäuser by Wagner. In 2024, Stutzmann led the Atlanta Symphony on a recording of Dvořák's Symphony No. 9 ("From a New World") and American Suite. ~ Keith Finke, Rovi