The respected conductor visited the Savonlinna Opera Festival in 2009.
Austrian conductor Stefan Soltész is dead. The conductor fell short unexpectedly on Friday night, July 22, in the middle of the show, when he was conducting by Richard Strauss opera Reticent wife at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich.
Soltész was pronounced dead later that evening, the opera confirmed. Soltész was 73 years old when he died.
During his career Soltész conducted in numerous major European opera houses.
Soltész was born in 1949 in Hungary and later studied composition, piano playing and conducting in Vienna, Austria.
Soltész started as a practicing pianist and worked under several distinguished conductors such as by Karl Böhm, as an assistant. Later, he became a conductor at, among others, the Hamburg State Opera.
Between 1997 and 2013, Soltész was the musical director of the opera house Aalto-Theater in Essen, Germany.
In the year 2009 Soltész visited the Savonlinna Opera Festival, where he conducted Giacomo Puccini Madama Butterfly. In Savonlinna, him interviewed Helsingin Sanomat’s culture editor Vesa Sirén.
In the article, Soltész was described as a skillful but demanding conductor who received “praise from critics, but scathing remarks from musicians”.
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