We are deeply saddened by the news that reached us today: Gabriel Feltz passed away suddenly and unexpectedly at University Hospital Essen on August 29th, 2025.
We had just begun a new friendship and collaboration filled with conversations, plans, and ideas. It is hard to comprehend that these exchanges will no longer take place. Our thoughts are with his family – especially his wife and children – during this difficult and dark time.
Gabriel Feltz is one of the most important German conductors of his generation. Since the beginning of the 2013/14 season, he has been the General Music Director (GMD) of the City of Dortmund, leading the Dortmund Philharmonic Orchestra, and in 2024, he took up the same position in the state capital of Schleswig-Holstein, in Kiel. Over his twelve years in the Ruhr area, Gabriel Feltz left his mark on Dortmund’s musical life and elevated the Dortmund Philharmonic to one of North Rhine-Westphalia’s leading orchestras.
In addition to his role in Dortmund, he has been Chief Conductor of the Belgrade Philharmonic since September 2017.
Gabriel Feltz pursued a classic German Kapellmeister career path. After his artistic training at the Hanns Eisler School of Music in Berlin, he began working as Gerd Albrecht’s assistant at the Hamburg State Opera. Following posts as conductor in Lübeck and Bremen, Feltz took on his first GMD position with the Philharmonic Orchestra Altenburg-Gera (2001–2005). He then led the Stuttgart Philharmonic for nearly ten years, conducting more than 350 performances there. At the same time, from 2008 to 2013, Feltz was guest conductor at Theater Basel, which was named “Opera House of the Year” twice during that period.
The list of orchestras Gabriel Feltz has conducted at home and abroad is extensive—currently more than sixty orchestras worldwide. Notable examples include: the Saxon State Orchestra Dresden, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the radio orchestras of NDR (Hamburg and Hanover), WDR and MDR, the National Orchestra of Taiwan, the Graz Philharmonic, and the Osaka Philharmonic Orchestra. In the opera field, Gabriel Feltz is distinguished not only by his guest performances in traditional repertoire at many renowned houses—such as revivals of Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich and Arabella at the Frankfurt Opera—but above all by his work at Theater Dortmund. There, Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung, in a highly acclaimed production directed by Peter Konwitschny, is being brought to the stage until 2025. Gabriel Feltz has a regular collaboration with the Cologne Opera, where in December 2020, he conducted the successful livestream premiere of Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Die tote Stadt on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of its world premiere.
Gabriel Feltz has created, organized, and conducted many sensational projects. Notable among these are the “Beethoven Marathon 2022,” with all nine symphonies performed twice in one day in Germany and Serbia with two orchestras and more than 15,000 spectators in total, or the world premiere recording of Ottorino Respighi’s Belkis—Queen of Sheba in its full length as the second performance after the 1937 world premiere.
As one of few conductors in his position, Gabriel Feltz also devotes himself with conviction to the major, highly demanding works of the avant-garde. In the 2013/14 season, he made his acclaimed debut at the Komische Oper Berlin with the premiere of Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Soldaten, followed by Luigi Nono’s Intolleranza 1960 at the same house—a work which Feltz had previously conducted in Bremen. He debuted at Zurich Opera in 2016 with a new production of Wolfgang Rihm’s Hamletmaschine. In the current season, he led the world premiere of Christian Jost’s opera Voyage vers l’Espoir at the Geneva Opera, which received a broad response. In 2024, the artist returned to Zurich Opera for Amerika by Roman Haubenstock-Ramati. This extremely complex music theater premiere, prepared over five years, won the OPERA AWARD 2025 for “Best Rediscovery”
