David Bates

A graduate of the Royal Academy of Music and of the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, David Bates initially embarked on a professional singing career before turning to directing/conducting. Inspired by his work with such renowned conductors as Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Mark Minkowski, Andrea Marcon, and Nicholas McGegan, and driven by a desire to articulate his own musical vision, he founded La Nuova Musica (LNM) in 2007.

David Bates opened the 2024-25 season conducting Stefan Herheim’s new production of Idomeneo with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra in his debut at Theater an der Wien. The season also included concerts with the Orchestra of the 18th Century, Deutsche Oper Berlin, and Opéra de Rouen, and his debut at the Deutsche Oper Berlin in Die Zauberflote. In the 2025-26 season he conducts Handel’s Giustino at the Royal Opera and Ballet Covent Garden’s Linbury Theatre, leads performances of Messiah with the Bournemouth Symphony, Idomeneo with Boston Baroque and returns to Opéra de Rouen for Agrippina. With La Nuova Musica he continues a regular series of appearances at Wigmore Hall and conducts tours of Mozart’s C Minor Mass and Handel’s Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno; further plans include returns to the Grange Festival and his debut at Garsington Opera in 2027.

Following a very successful debut at the Komische Oper in a new production of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice by Damiano Michieletto in 2022, he has since returned there to conduct Handel’s Saul and Hercules. Elsewhere he has conducted Handel’s Alcina for Glyndebourne Festival with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment; Alcina and Monteverdi’s Orfeo for Staatsoper Hannover; Handel’s Serse with Opéra de Rouen Normandie; Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea at The Grange Festival; and Handel’s Israel in Egypt with the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists. On the concert platform, he has explored Mozart and Beethoven with the Munich Symphony Orchestra.

Directing from the harpsichord, David Bates’s previous opera productions have included Rinaldo for Glyndebourne on Tour; Cesti’s Orontea at the Innsbrucker Festwochen; Cavalli’s La Calisto for Cincinnati Opera; Iphigénie en Tauride at the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos in Lisbon, and Vivaldi’s Farnace with the Tony Award-winning theatre director Garry Hynes at the Spoleto Festival in the United States.

Together with La Nuova Musica, David Bates has made numerous award-winning recordings for Pentatone and Harmonia Mundi. Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice on Pentatone, featuring Iestyn Davies and Sophie Bevan, was shortlisted for a 2020 Gramophone Award; and their CDs for Harmonia Mundi received ‘Le choix de France Musique’ and Gramophone ‘Editor’s Choice’.