Austrian conductor Stefan Soltész collapses during performance and dies

Soltész conducted the comic opera The Schweigsame Frau by Richard Strauss. A few minutes before the end of the first act, a bang was heard and a call for a doctor was heard, after which the performance was stopped. “I am deeply saddened by the death of Stefan Soltész. We are losing a gifted conductor,” Bavarian State Opera general director Serge Dorny wrote on Twitter.

Soltész was born in Hungary in 1949, where he had piano lessons from the age of four. At the age of 10 he moved to Vienna. In 1971 he started his career at the Theater an der Wien. In the following two decades he was conductor of the Vienna State Opera, the Hamburg State Opera and then the Deutsche Oper in Berlin.

From 1992 to 1997 he was conductor at the Flemish Opera in Antwerp and Ghent. In 1997 he was appointed artistic director and music director of the Aalto Muziektheater in Essen, where he worked until 2013. The Essener Philharmoniker acquired great international fame and appreciation under his leadership. A German trade magazine voted the orchestra, led by Soltész, the best of the year twice. In the Netherlands he led a production of Richard Strauss’ salome at the Dutch Opera in 2009.

Soltész is not the first conductor to die (shortly after) a performance. The best-known example in the Netherlands is that of Eduard van Beinum, who suffered a cardiac arrest in 1959 as chief of the Concertgebouw Orchestra while conducting Brahms’ First Symphony. Giuseppe Sinopoli died in 2001 after suffering a heart attack while conducting Verdi’s Aida in Berlin. Two years ago, the music world was shocked by the death of the Belgian conductor Patrick Davin, just before the rehearsal started in the opera house De Munt in Brussels.