Simon Krečič
Simon Krečič is a Slovenian pianist and conductor, who has been acting as the Artistic and Musical Director of the Opera of the Slovene National Theatre Maribor for several years now. As a pianist, he graduated in 2002 from the Academy of Music in Ljubljana, and got his master’s degree three years later from the Bern University of the Arts. It is there that he began studying conducting, which he finished at the Ljubljana Academy of Music in 2012 with a première and nine performances of the Stravinsky ballet evening produced by SNG Opera and Ballet Ljubljana.
From 2007 to 2012, he was employed by the SNG Opera and Ballet Ljubljana, where he acted as a répétiteur in all opera productions, as well as assistant conductor in certain performances. He then joined the RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra for a year, where he remains a regular guest to this day, and became the Artistic and Musical Director of the Opera of the Slovene National Theatre Maribor in December 2013.
In November 2008, he took part in the International Conducting Competition in Grosseto, Italy, and won third place. The same year, he joined violinist Anja Bukovec on a world tour as her piano accompanist, during which he played in the most prestigious halls of the centres of culture abroad. A year later, he conducted the Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra for the first time, at a concert within the Slovenian Music Days. He remains a regular guest of the Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra and has performed alongside it on many a foreign stage.
His major recent projects include conducting Rossini’s Cinderella and Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann with SNG Opera and Ballet Ljubljana, musical management of the first Slovenian staging of Wagner’s The Rhinegold in Maribor, Verdi’s A Masked Ball in China and Puccini’s Tosca and Turandot in Rovigo and Ferrara in 2017 and 2018, respectively, and musical management of Donizetti’s operas The Daughter of the Regiment and The Elixir of Love in Trieste, and Weber’s The Marksman at Kammeroper Schloss Rheinsberg in Germany in 2018. In July 2019, he was a guest for the first time at the Teatro Massimo di Palermo, with a ballet evening entitled “Danza d’autore”.