Currently Principal Conductor of the Bonn Opera in Germany, Jacques Lacombe keeps his hand in the orchestral scene in North America when he leads the Boston Symphony February 15-17 in a subscription week at Symphony Hall – an all-French program (Debussy/Ravel) with Jean-Yves Thibaudet. Also in February, he returns for concerts with the Montreal Symphony — where he has led well over a hundred concerts — in a program of Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5 and Shostakovich’s Violin Cto. No. 2, featuring violinist Alina Ibragimova. At season’s end, he leads the Quebec Symphony in Brahms’ German Requiem.
On the opera front in 2017/18, Lacombe leads Carmen, Il Tabarro/Gianni Schicchi and Oberst Charbert in Bonn; Hoffmann in Monte Carlo with Juan Diego Flores and Olga Peretyatko, Faust at the Deutsche Oper Berlin (Diana Damrau’s debut in the role of Marguerite), Tosca at the Calgary Opera and Turandot in Vancouver.
Rounding out the picture, in the last several seasons European Opera houses have seen Lacombe lead productions of:
Bonn
Holofernes
La Boheme
Lucia
Peter Grimes
Tosca
Carmen
Deutsche Oper Berlin
Pelleas and Melisande
Der Traumgörge
Flying Dutchman
Ariadne Auf Naxos
Eugene Onegin
Un Ballo in Maschera
Faust
Samson and Delilah
L’Opera de Monte Carlo
La Favorite (w/ J.D. Flores)
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
Opera Gala w/ Diana Damrau
Nantes/Anger: Dialogues des Carmélites
Opéra National du Rhin: La Juive
L’Orchestre National de France/Paris: Werther w/ J.D. Flores and Joyce DiDonato
“On the orchestral front, an augmented Vancouver Opera orchestra revelled in the score’s sinister brilliance and conductor Jacques Lacombe was in his element.” – David Gordon Duke, Vancouver Sun, October 15, 2017
“Lacombe proved a skilled and zealous advocate for this music’s poundingly atavistic rhythms and its fanciful lyric scenes.” – Jeremy Eichler, Boston Globe, July 11, 2016