Zubin Mehta
was born in 1936 in Bombay and received his first musical education by his father Mehli Mehta, the founder of the Bombay Symphony Orchestra. After a short period of pre-medical studies in Bombay, he left for Vienna in 1954 where he eventually entered the conducting programme under Hans Swarowsky at the Akademie für Musik. Zubin Mehta won the Liverpool International Conducting Competition in 1958 and was also a prize-winner of the summer academy at Tanglewood. By 1961 he had already conducted the Vienna, Berlin and Israel Philharmonic Orchestras and still retains close ties with these orchestras.

Zubin Mehta was Music Director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra from 1961 to 1967 becoming Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra in 1962, a post he retained until 1978. In 1969 he also became Music Adviser to the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and was made Music Director of that orchestra in 1977. In 1981 he was made Music Director for life. Zubin Mehta has conducted over two thousand concerts with this extraordinary ensemble including tours spanning five continents. In 1978 he became Music Director of the New York Philharmonic commencing a tenure lasting 13 years, the longest in the orchestra's history. Since 1985, he has been chief conductor of the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence.

Zubin Mehta made his debut as an opera conductor with Tosca in Montreal in 1963. Since then he has conducted at the Metropolitan Opera New York, the Vienna State Opera, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, La Scala Milan and the opera houses of Chicago and Florence as well as at the Salzburg Festival. Between 1998 and 2006 he was Music Director of the Bavarian State Opera where he conducted more that 400 performances.

Zubin Mehta's list of awards and honours is extensive and includes the "Nikisch-Ring" bequeathed to him by Karl Böhm. He is an honorary citizen of both Florence and Tel Aviv and was made an honorary member of the Vienna State Opera in 1997. In 1999 Zubin Mehta was presented the "Lifetime Achievement Peace and Tolerance Award" of the United Nations. In 2001 he was bestowed the title of "Honorary Conductor" of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and in 2004 the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra awarded him the same title, as did the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in 2006. At the end of his tenure with the Bavarian State Opera he was named Honorary Conductor of the Bavarian State Orchestra and Honorary Member of the Bavarian State Opera. In December 2006 he received the "Kennedy Center Honor". The Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde Wien appointed him in November 2007 honorary member.

In October 2006 he opened the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia in Valencia followed by a three year project of Richard Wagner’s Ring des Nibelungen cycle in the production of the Fura del Baus of Barcelona in Valencia and Florence.

Marjana Lipovsek
Born in the Slovenian capital Ljubljana, the dramatic contralto Marjana Lipovsek initially studied piano and music teaching in her native city, then began training as a singer at the Musikhochschule in Graz.

Immediately after completing her studies, Marjana Lipovsek was engaged by the Vienna State Opera, where she acquired experience on the stage in small and medium roles.

She began her conquest of the major contralto roles at the Hamburg Opera: Oktavian in Der Rosenkavalier, Dorabella in Così fan tutte, Marina in Boris Godunov and Ulrica in Un ballo in maschera. She made a very successful debut at La Scala in Milan as Mrs. Quickly in Falstaff. At the Munich State Opera, she mastered more of the repertoire's great dramatic roles, above all Marie in Alban Berg's Wozzeck, Preziosilla in La forza del destino, Gaea in Daphne and Fricka, which, in Marjana Lipovsek's interpretation, became a focal point of the new Munich Ring production.

At the Bregenz Summer Festival, her Dalila in Saint-Saëns' opera Samson et Dalila was a spectacular success and led to further engagements in this role in Berlin, in Perelada (with José Carreras as Samson), at the Vienna State Opera and at the Opéra de la Bastille in Paris.

In the meantime, she has sung the most important roles of the contralto repertoire, e.g. Brangäne in Tristan und Isolde, Amneris in Aida, Azucena in Il trovatore, Orpheus in Orpheus und Eurydice, Eboli in Don Carlo in the most important European opera houses. In October 1989 she interpreted Marfa in Khovanshchina at the Vienna State Opera under Claudio Abbado and in March 1990 she sang Klytemnestra in Elektra at Covent Garden under Sir Georg Solti. At the Salzburg Easter and Summer Festivals in 1992 she was highly acclaimed for her first Amme in Die Frau ohne Schatten.

Marjana Lipovsek returned to Salzburg for the Easter and Summer Festivals in 1994 in the role of Marina in Boris Godunov and appears at the 1995 Easter Festival in the role of Klytemnestra in Elektra under the baton of Claudio Abbado.

Markus Wolf
born in 1962 in Vienna, has been First Concertmaster at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich since 1989. Before that, he held the same position at the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. Wolf studied at the Vienna Music Conservatory under Günter Pichler, where he started working as his assistant lecturer for six years in 1983, after having passed his diploma examination with unanimous distinction. He subsequently studied under Max Rostal, Nathan Milstein, Oskar Shumsky and Sandor Vegh.

Ever since he was child, Markus Wolf, who has also made a name for himself as an award-winner at several competitions, has been devoting himself to chamber music. From 1971 until 1982, he joined his brothers in the "Wolf Trio", initially as violinist and later on as viola player. As violist, he was also invited by the "Alban Berg Quartett" to perform Mozart’s string quintets with them and to record them for EMI.

As a soloist and chamber musician, he gave concerts with Wolfgang Sawallisch, Sir Colin Davis, Zubin Mehta, Marcello Viotti, Peter Schneider, Kent Nagano, Jan Märkl, and Ivor Bolton, to name but a few. In 1981, he founded the "Beethoven Trio Wien", which he regularly performs with throughout Europe, Japan, Canada, and in the United States. The ensemble has already released eleven CDs, among others the piano trios by Mozart, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, Smetana, and Korngold, as well as Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with the Vienna Chamber Orchestra and Philippe Entremont.

Wolf has been playing in the horn trio with Ab Koster and Nikolaus Lahusen since 1992 († 2005). In 1999, together with Johannes Dengler, he founded the "Munich Horn Trio", whose album of trios by Brahms, Ligeti and Koechlin was awarded the ECHO Klassik Prize in 2012.

Further CD recordings are Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto (triptychon) and the Chamber Symphony No. 1 by Schönberg, conducted by Zubin Mehta.

The artist teaches master classes in Germany and Japan, and has given numerous guest performances as a concertmaster at the London Symphony Orchestra from 1997 until 2002.

Since the year 2000, he has been teaching at the Munich Richard Strauss Music Conservatory and has been Denes Szigmondy’s successor at the Augsburg Music Conservatory since 2005. Since the academic year 2008/09, upon the integration of the Richard-Strauss-Conservatorium into the Music Hochschule, he has been a tutor at the Hochschule for Music and Theatre in Munich. In 2012 Markus Wolf was nominated Honorary Professor.

In appreciation of his services towards the Bavarian State Opera, he was awarded the title of "Bayerischer Kammervirtuose" in the year of 2000.

Markus Wolf plays the "Vollrath-Stradivarius" from 1722, a loan from the Bayerische Landesbank.

The Bavarian State Orchestra
emerged from the oldest orchestra in Germany. Its origins can be traced back to the year 1523, when the composer Ludwig Senfl took over the direction of the Munich Kantorei. The first renowned director of Munich's Court music, and of the Court Orchestra, was the composer Orlando di Lasso, who was officially hired in 1563, during the reign of Duke Albrecht V. In 1594, the Duke established a seminar for musical studies, with scholarship for the gifted sons of farmers and average citizens without means, to insure the future of the Court Orchestra. After Lasso's death in 1594, Johannes de Fossa, the former Assistant Musical Director, took over leadership of the orchestra.

After over 100 years in which the orchestra's repertoire was comprised mainly of church music, the first opera performance took place in Munich: Maccioni's L'Arpa festante, performed in the Residence in 1653. The composer Agostino Steffani earned his reputation with many performances of italian operas in the 1680's. The term "orchestra" was not introduced until 1762. The court orchestra, directed by Andrea Bernasconi, first began to do regular opera work in the middle of the 1770's, as numerous performances began to take place on specified days. In 1778, Mannheim's Elector Karl Theodor introduced his government's legacy to Munich. He brought 33 of Mannheim's court musicians with him to Munich; on October 1st, 1778, these Mannheim musicians were united with 32 selected members of the Munich Court Orchestra.

In 1811 the Musical Academy, made up of members of the Court Orchestra, was founded.

The same year saw King Max I laying the cornerstone of the Royal Court and National Theatre, which was opened on October 12th, 1818 during King Max I's reign, the duties of the Court Orchestra included in equal measure the performance of church music, teatime music, chamber music and theatre music. Under King Ludwig I, the orchestra managed to win Franz Lachner as its first General Music Director in 1836.

The reign of King Ludwig II is cloesly allied with the name of Richard Wagner. On June 10th, 1865, the Court Orchestra Director Hans von Bülow conducted the premiere of Tristan and Isolde; on june 21st, 1868, that of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. There followed premieres of das Rheingold and Die Walküre, conducted by Franz Wüllner, on September 22nd, 1869, and June 26th, 1870 respectively.

Hermann Levi was the General Music Director from 1872 to 1900. Since then, the most important artists of their time have served as heads of the orchestra, from Richard Strauss, Felix Mottl, through Bruno Walter, Hans Knappertsbusch, and Clemes Keauss, to Georg Solti, Ferenc Fricsay, Joseph Keilberth, and Wolfgang Sawallisch. Zubin Mehta was Bavarian General Music Director since 1998. Since 2006, Kent Nagano has held this appointment.