Since his debut with Britten’s Albert Herring in 1995 at the Schwetzinger Festspiele, Olaf Storbeck has established himself as a versatile conductor, with positions as Kapellmeister at Theater Heidelberg and the Deutsches Nationaltheater Weimar, as well as at the Oldenburgisches Staatstheater, where he was also Assistant Musical Director.
As a representative of the German Kapellmeister tradition, Maestro Storbeck has conducted over forty operas in all styles. The main body of these works has included Tannhäuser, Madama Butterfly, La Bohème, Wozzeck, Il Trovatore, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, as well as all the standard Mozart operas.
As a guest conductor, Maestro Storbeck has conducted orchestras in Dessau, Regensburg, Osnabrück, Bonn, Mannheim, Dortmund and Karlsruhe. Since 2007 he has been engaged as Professor of Opera Studies at the Musikhochschule Zürich and since 2008, has been Music Director of Lyric Opera Studio Weimar.
Equally at home with modern opera, Maestro Storbeck has worked with composers such as Hans Zender (Don Quixote) and Maurizio Kagel for a production of Aus Deutschland, which was considered by the composer as a benchmark production for German theatres. In 2005 he conducted the première of Rossinis Otello at the Deutsches Nationaltheater Weimar, which started a revival of the piece across Europe. This production also marked the beginning of his collaboration with Peter Berne, one of the last assistants of renowned bel canto coach Luigi Ricci.
In 2001, Maestro Storbeck conducted the world première of Veracini’s As You Like It in collaboration with Reinhard Goebel, founder and leader of Musica Antiqua Köln. Productions at the Deutsches Nationaltheater in Weimar include Galuppi’s Il mondo alla roversa, Purcell’s The Fairy Queen and Caccini’s I disingannati. Continuing to specialize in Baroque opera, he has had particular success with Vivaldi’s Il Giustino at Staatstheater Oldenburg.
Olaf Storbeck began his musical career in piano studies in Stuttgart, with Prof. Paul Buck, teacher of Gerard Oppitz and Hartmut Höll. Further studies in piano and orchestral conducting included such teachers as György Sebök, Jürgen Uhde, Marcello Viotti and Marek Janowski.