Harry Bicket
Harry Bicket was born in Liverpool and studied at the Royal College of Music and the University of Oxford, where he was Organ Scholar at Christ Church. He is an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music and was awarded an OBE in the 2022 Queen’s Birthday Honors.
Bicket is internationally renowned, especially for his interpretations of Baroque and Classical repertoire. Since 2007, he has been Artistic Director of the English Concert, one of Europe’s finest period orchestras, with whom he has recently undertaken a project to record all of Handel’s works as a public online resource.
Following his tenure as Chief Conductor since 2013, Bicket was appointed Music Director of the Santa Fe Opera in 2018. His productions with the company include Don Giovanni, Orfeo, Pelléas et Mélisande, Carmen, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Le nozze di Figaro, Fidelio, La finta giardiniera, Roméo et Juliette, Alcina, Candide, and Così fan tutte, and in 2019, he conducted Strauss’ Four Last Songs with Renée Fleming. He returns this summer for Le nozze di Figaro.
Elsewhere this season, Bicket makes his Opernhaus Zurich debut with Agripinna, and returns to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for a collaboration with the Joffrey Ballet. With the English Concert this season, Bicket is currently leading the European and US tour of Handel’s Giulio Cesare, as well as the group’s regular London series and presentations of the Messiah in Madrid and Barcelona.
He is a regular guest at the Metropolitan Opera, where his recent productions have included Rodelinda, Die Zauberflöte, Le nozze di Figaro, La clemenza di Tito, Giulio Cesare, Agrippina, and Così fan tutte. Bicket’s many titles at the Lyric Opera of Chicago include Carmen and Rinaldo. At the Canadian Opera Company, he has conducted Le nozze di Figaro, Maometto II, and Hercules, and at Houston Grand Opera, Le nozze di Figaro and Rusalka. Bicket is regularly invited to conduct North American orchestras including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Houston Symphony, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Seattle Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Indianapolis Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, and NACO Ottawa.
In Europe, Bicket made his debut at the Paris Opera during the 2023–24 season with Ariodante in a new production by Robert Carsen and returned the following season for Giulio Cesare. At the Bavarian State Opera, Munich, he has conducted Rinaldo, Ariodante, Serse, Orlando, Orfeo ed Euridice, Il barbiere di Siviglia, Die Entführung aus dem Serail, and Die Zauberflöte. At the Liceu, Barcelona, Bicket received the Opera Critics Best Conductor Prize for Giulio Cesare and he has also appeared at Theater an der Wien (Iphigenie en Tauride, Mitridate) and the Bordeaux National Opera (Alcina).
Popular in the UK, Bicket made his Glyndebourne Festival debut in 1996 in Peter Sellars’ landmark production of Handel’s Theodora and he has made numerous appearances with the English National Opera, Scottish Opera, and Welsh National Opera. His Theodora at the Royal Opera House in 2022 was nominated for an Olivier Award for Best New Production.
Bicket’s vast orchestral experience includes repertoire from Bach to Britten with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Oslo Philharmonic, Prague Philharmonic, Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, RTE National Symphony Orchestra, Royal Northern Sinfonia, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic, and Tokyo Symphony.
He is a prolific studio artist and has made many recordings with the English Concert, most recently Handel’s Rodelinda and La Resurezzione and Serse, released to critical acclaim in 2023 for Linn Records. Bicket’s discography also includes five recordings with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, among them collections of Handel opera arias with Renée Fleming (Decca) and Ian Bostridge (EMI), as well as selections from Handel’s Theodora, Serse, and the cantata La Lucrezia with Lorraine Hunt Lieberson (Avie), which was nominated for a Grammy Award. His solo recordings with David Daniels (Virgin Veritas) and Susan Graham (Erato) were both nominated for Gramophone Awards.