Omer Meir Wellber has established himself as one of today’s leading conductors of operatic and orchestral repertoire alike. He is Music Director of the Volksoper Wien, Music Director of the Teatro Massimo Palermo, Music Director of the Toscanini Festival and Music Director of the Raanana Symphonette in Israel. He will become Hamburg General Music Director of the Philharmonic State Orchestra as well as General Music Director and Chief Conductor of the Hamburg State Opera as of the 2025/2026 season. He was Chief Conductor of the BBC Philharmonic from 2019 until 2022. In 2010-14 he served as Music Director at the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia in Valencia, leading both orchestral and operatic performances. He has worked with some of the world’s leading orchestras, including the London Philharmonic, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, NDR Elbphilharmonie, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Staatskapelle Dresden, SWR Symphony Orchestra, Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich and the Israel Philharmonic, which he led in 2016 at the Dresden Music Festival. As an opera conductor, he has led productions at major opera houses, among them the Berlin Staatsoper, La Scala in Milan, Semperoper in Dresden, Arena di Verona, Bavarian State Opera, Vienna State Opera, the Metropolitan Opera and the Israeli Opera. For his innovative work at Teatro Massimo, he received the special prize of the prestigious Italian National Association of Music Critics (2021). His festival appearances include BBC Proms, Glyndebourne, Vienna Festival and Saito Kinen Festival in Matsumoto, Japan. He hosted the BBC’s The Music Room, a video conversation series, which started in 2020 exploring Beethoven’s 9 symphonies and continued with Discovering Ben-Haim, discussing the composer’s life and works. From 2008 to 2010, he assisted Daniel Barenboim at the Berlin Staatsoper Unter den Linden and at Milan’s La Scala. Omer Meir Wellber is also a published author in several languages. He is a Good Will Ambassador for Save a Child’s Heart, an Israeli-based non-profit organization that provides critical cardiac medical support, and collaborates with various institutions through outreach programs and fosters the next generation of conducting students through educational lectures. Born in Be’er Sheva in 1981, he began studying accordion and piano at the age of five. He started composition lessons with Tania Taler at the age of nine before continuing with Michael Wolpe until 2004. He graduated from the Be’er Sheva Conservatory in 1999 and received a music scholarship from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation, which he used to study Conducting and Composition at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance (2000-08) with Eugene Zirlin and Mendi Rodan. He plays a custom-built accordion, model POLARIS, from the Italian accordion manufacturer PIGINI.