Marko Letonja previously served as Chief Conductor of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg from 2012 to 2021, a tenure that featured collaborations with renowned artists such as Isabelle Faust, Stephen Hough, Nemanja Radulović, and Jean-Efflam Bavouzet. His recent recording with the orchestra and vocalist Michael Spyres, entitled Baritenor, quickly amassed critical acclaim and was chosen as one of the top 10 classical albums of 2021 by The Times and winning the 2022 Gramophone Award for Vocal Album of the Year. He was also awarded the Helpmann Award for Best Symphony Orchestra Concert for a concert performance of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde with Nina Stemme and Stuart Skelton.
Letonja has been invited to guest conduct a number of the world’s most prestigous orchestras, including the Vienna Symphony, Munich Philharmonic, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Hamburg Symphony, Salzburg Mozarteum, Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala, the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi, and the Berlin Radio Symphony. He has previously held further titled positions, including Chief Conductor of the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, and Chief Conductor of Sinfonieorchester Basel and the Theater Basel, where he recorded a complete cycle of symphonies by Felix Weingartner and conducted new productions of Tannhäuser, La traviata, Der Freischütz, Boris Godunov, Tristan und Isolde, Rigoletto, and Don Giovanni.
During the 2025/2026 season, Letonja returns to the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège to conduct a Strauss Four Last Songs and Bruckner programme. Other highlights include Mahler’s Eighth Symphony with the Hungarian State Opera, Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony with the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano, Poulenc’s Organ Concerto with Olivier Latry and the Prague Symphony Orchestra, and Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2 with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and violinist Nemanja Radulović. Recent and upcoming highlights include a UK tour with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, a German tour with Staatskapelle Weimar, Les contes d’Hoffmann at the New National Theatre Tokyo, Jenůfa at Staatsoper Stuttgart, The Cunning Little Vixen at Deutsche Oper Berlin, a filmed Springtime in Amsterdam with Dutch National Opera, Schreker’s Der Schatzgräber and Ginastera’s Beatrix Cenci at the Opéra National du Rhin in Strasbourg – the latter awarded the Grand Prix for Best Opera Production by the Syndicat Professionnel de la Critique in 2019 – as well as the celebration of the 200th anniversary season of the Bremer Philharmoniker with distinguished guest artists Frank Peter Zimmermann, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, Emmanuel Tjeknavorian and Tabea Zimmermann.
An avid enthusiast of the music of Wagner, he has also conducted the Ring cycle at both the Royal Swedish Opera and Teatro Saõ Carlos in Lisbon, as well as productions of Parsifal, Die Walküre, and Götterdämmerung at the Opéra National du Rhin. Previously, Letonja has also conducted at the Vienna State Opera (The Queen of Spades, Les contes d’Hoffmann), the Grand Théâtre of Geneva (Medea, Manon), the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome (Roméo et Juliette), the Semperoper in Dresden (Nabucco), Teatro alla Scala in Milan (Il dissoluto assolto by José Samarago in combination with Hindemith’s Sancta Susanna; The Makropulos Case, Les contes d’Hoffmann), the Staatsoper Berlin (Madama Butterfly), the Deutsche Oper Berlin (La traviata), the Opéra National du Rhin (Die Walküre, Götterdämmerung, Der fliegender Holländer, The Makropulos Case, The Queen of Spades), and at the Teatro Lirico in Cagliari (Cavalleria Rusticana, Pagliacci, Der fliegende Holländer).
Marko Letonja began his studies as a pianist and conductor at the Music Academy of Ljubljana and graduated as a student of Otmar Suitner at the Academy of Music and Theatre in Vienna in 1989. Only two years later he became Music Director of the Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra in Ljubljana, which he conducted until 2003. He makes his Hungarian State Opera debut in 2025 with Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 (Symphony of a Thousand).