Robert Houssart brings the improvisatory flexibility of his early training as an organist to a very extensive repertoire of opera, ballet, and new music. Born in Haarlem, he was raised in the UK and studied at Cambridge and Manchester. He appears at companies such as the Opéra national de Paris, Sächsische Staatsoper Dresden, Opernhaus Zürich, Opéra National du Rhin, Strasbourg, Teatr Wielki – Polish National Opera, Warsaw, Grand Theâtre de Genève, Volksoper Wien, and Theater an der Wien.
Houssart made his debut with the Australian premiere of Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre at the Adelaide Festival. From 2015 to 2024 he was resident conductor at the Royal Danish Opera and Royal Danish Ballet, Copenhagen, and has conducted more than 300 performances there. His projects have included new operas such as Hans Abrahamsen’s The Snow Queen (world premiere), Louise Alenius’s Manualen (world premiere), Thomas Adès’s The Exterminating Angel and Powder Her Face, Matias Vestergaard’s Lisbon Floor (world premiere), Haugur Tómasson’s Gudruns Lied, alongside a core repertoire of Mozart, Verdi, Puccini, Bizet, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Debussy, Wagner, Strauss, Bernstein, and his advocacy of Entartete Musik such as Weill and Korngold.
His ballet credits include Giselle, The Nutcracker, Swan Lake and Johan Inger’s A Swan Lake, Onegin, Romeo and Juliet, Cinderella, Blixen (Dean), Countertime (Marston), The Dante Project (MacGregor/Adès), and Et Folkesagn.
At the Polish National Opera, he conducts Barbara Wysocka's production Gounod's Roméo et Juliette (2026).
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