Ensemble, Guests, Opera Studio & Teams

Franck Ollu

Conductor

Franck Ollu
© Jean-Jacques Ollu

The versatile conductor Franck Ollu is respected as an expert in contemporary music and French repertoire. He works closely with the Ensemble Modern, leading Oper Frankfurt productions including Matalon's Spectacle Spaces, part of heim.spiele and Goebbels’ Landschaft mit entfernten Verwandten / Landscape with distant relations. Now he is back in the Bockenheimer Depot, where he appeared for the first time in 2007/08 with the first performances in Germany of George Benjamin's Into the Little Hill, returning in 2017/18 for a double bill of Saed Haddad's A Wintery Spring and Jan Dismas Zelenka's Il serpente di bronzo – an Oper Frankfurt / Ensemble Modern co-production, for Benedict Mason's Chaplin Operas. Other recent engagements have included a Gehege / Il prigioniero double bill at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels, Zemlinsky's Der Zwerg / The Dwarf at the Opéra de Lille and Opéra de Rennes. He also enjoyed great success with Rihm's Jakob Lenz at Stuttgart Opera and in Brussels and Berlin, Frank Martin's Le vin herbé at the Staatsoper Berlin, Xenakis’ Oresteïa at Theater Basel, Benjamins Written on Skin at the Bolschoi in Moscow and Pelléas et Mélisande at the Royal Opera in Stockholm and in Strasbourg. He has also worked at the Nationale Opera Amsterdam, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysée in Paris and Théâtre du Capitole in Toulouse. This season his projects include a new production of Jakob Lenz at the Nationaltheater in Mannheim and the world premiere of Thierry Escaich's opera Shirine at the Opéra de Lyon. He has championed many world premieres including Dusapin's Penthesilea and Passion, Bianchi's Thanks to my Eyes, Benjamin's Into the Little Hill and Helmut Oehring's Die Wunde Heine with the Ensemble Modern at the Music Triennale in Cologne and Deutsche Kammer Philharmonie Bremen in the Berlin Philharmonie. Franck Ollu is a regular guest at the Aix-en-Provence, Aldeburgh, Amsterdam, Vienna and Dresden festivals. Concert work has included appearances with the hr-Sinfonieorchester, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra the Deutsche Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the Budapest Festival Orchestra, the BBC and Danish National symphony orchestras and at the Konserthuset in Stockholm.