Péter Halász is the principal guest conductor of the Hungarian State Opera. Having fulfilled this role since the 2023/24 season, he has already won acclaim for the first-ever performance of Dvorak’s Rusalka at the State Opera and for the Hungarian premiere of Puccini’s Turandot with Luciano Berio’s finale. On top of this, in the past two seasons he has conducted revivals of Wagner’s Parsifal, Verdi’s Don Carlo, Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana, Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, Bizet’s Carmen and Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos and Arabella.
In the 2025/26 season, in addition to the premiere of Beethoven’s Fidelio (directed by Tobias Kratzer), Péter is conducting Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, Verdi’s Rigoletto and Rossini’s L’italiana in Algeri at the Hungarian State Opera.
Between 2021 and 2024, Péter was engaged as first Kapellmeister at Deutsche Oper am Rhein, Düsseldorf, and he still frequently appears there as a guest conductor.
In the 2022/23 season, Péter conducted the Düsseldorf premiere of Tchaikovsky’s The Maid of Orleans, which enjoyed great acclaim from both critics and audiences alike. In addition to this, he garnered rave reviews for his premiere presentation of Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur in Duisburg.
Other works Péter conducted during his tenure at Deutsche Oper am Rhein included Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel, Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, Puccini’s Tosca and Madama Butterfly, Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore, Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus and Verdi’s La traviata.
Born in Budapest, after piano studies, Péter learned composition at the Bartók Conservatory. Continuing his education at Vienna’s Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien, he studied conducting under Professor Leopold Hager and the years he spent there still define his taste and musical aesthetic. After travelling to Lucerne to take master classes from Bernard Haitink, he assisted Ádám Fischer on several occasions.
At the inception of his career, Péter coached young singers as a member of the International Opera Studio at Opernhaus Zürich. Following this, he was engaged as a coach and conductor by Staatstheater Mainz, where he assembled a sizeable repertoire of operas.
From 2011, he was the principal conductor and deputy music director of Sinfonieorchester Aachen and Theater Aachen for two seasons. During this time, he led the premieres of Salvatore Sciarrino’s Superflumina, Rossini’s La Cenerentola, Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus, Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera and Poulenc’s La voix humaine and Monteverdi’s Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda. With the Aachen premieres of Ariodante and Alcina, Péter initiated a Händel cycle played on period instruments. He additionally conducted performances of Bizet’s Carmen, Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel, Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra and Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde in Aachen.
As music director of the Hungarian State Opera from 2013 to 2016, Péter was responsible for many successful premieres. The first of these was Verdi’s Falstaff, timed to coincide with the two hundredth anniversary of the composer’s birth. A milestone in Hungarian operatic life was when he premiered the first ever domestic performance of Richard Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten, which enjoyed a fantastic reception from critics and audiences alike and has been one of the Hungarian State Opera’s most prominent productions ever since. In collaboration with Academy Award-winning director Jiri Menzel, Péter presented Mozart’s Cosí fan tutte featuring the cream of young Hungarian singers in the principal roles. In the same season he also conducted Weber’s Der Freischütz. 2015 saw the inception of a brand-new production of Wagner’s Ring cycle with Das Rheingold, which was followed by Die Walküre in 2016, and Siegfried in 2017. When in 2016, Thomas Adès’ The Tempest received its first ever Eastern European performance, it was also the first occasion on which a stage work by the preeminent contemporary composer had been performed in Hungary.
It was at the invitation of Ádám Fischer that Péter made his debut at the Hungarian State Opera with Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia in 2010. Since then he has regularly led repertoire performances in Budapest, having conducted upwards of 30 different works over more than 250 performances. In 2016, he was the conductor for Plácido Domingo’s gala concert, which was the great tenor’s first ever performance at the Hungarian State Opera, and he has also conducted gala concerts and performances by such world-famous singers as Angela Gheorghiu, Ailyn Perez, Anja Kampe, Linda Watson, Vesselina Kassarova, Gregory Kunde, Piotr Beczala, Yusif Eyvazov, Ambrogio Maestri, Tomasz Konieczny and Feruccio Furlanetto.
In 2015, Péter was invited to join Staatsoper Hamburg, where he made his debut with Puccini’s Manon Lescaut. It was also here that he conducted Mozart’s Die Entführung in 2021 and 2023, and Don Giovanni in 2022.
In 2021, he led the premiere of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly at the Theater Bern, and in 2022 he was the conductor for the premiere of Rossini’s Cenerentola at the Latvian National Opera. In 2024, he led the Irish National Symphony Orchestra in their performance of William Wallace’s grand romantic opera Lurline.
In 2024, Péter took the podium at the Hungarian State Opera for the Solti Accademia’s gala concert. Featuring Hera Park, Aigul Akhmetshina, Freddie De Tommaso and Paul Grant, the event was streamed live by the Deutsche Grammophon Stage + platform, where the recording can still be enjoyed.
Aside from those mentioned above, Péter has also worked as a guest conductor for many other German opera houses and symphony orchestras, including Baadisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe, Staatstheater Kassel, Saarlaendisches Staatstheater and Staatsorchester Nürnberg, to name just a few.
Following a personal invitation from Zoltán Kocsis, Péter conducted the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra for the first time in 2016, and he has also frequently led concerts by many other leading Hungarian symphony orchestras.
In 2019, he worked as a guest professor at the Peter Eötvös Contemporary Music Foundation’s Master Course for Conductors at the invitation of Peter Eötvös himself.
In the 2023/24 season, he held courses on conducting opera as a visiting professor at Budapest’s Liszt Academy of Music, and at the invitation of Éva Marton, he conducted both the final and the gala concert of the Academy’s Fifth Éva Marton International Singing Competition.
In 2017, he was awarded the Golden Cross of the Order of Merit of the Hungarian Republic.
Péter lives in Budapest. He is married and is the proud father of two children.