Anthony Negus is one of the leading Wagnerian conductors of our day. 2023 has seen him give two highly acclaimed cycles of Der Ring des Nibelungen for Melbourne Opera (MO). This was preceded by a concert performance of Siegfried, and productions of Die Walküre (in 2022) and Das Rheingold (in 2021). For MO he has also conducted Fidelio (2020), Der fliegende Holländer (2019) and Tristan und Isolde (2018), for which he won a coveted Green Room Award for best conductor.

He is the longstanding Music Director of Longborough Festival Opera (LFO), where in June he conducted five enthusiastically received performances of Götterdämmerung, in advance of an eagerly awaited full Ring cycle in 2024. During his many years with LFO, he has established himself as one of the most perceptive and original conductors of the Wagner repertoire, giving acclaimed performances of the Ring cycle (2008–12 individual operas, 2013 full cycle, all directed by Alan Privett), Tannhäuser (also directed by Privett), Tristan und Isolde (directed by Carmen Jakobi) and Der fliegende Holländer (directed by Thomas Guthrie). The 2017 revival of Tristan und Isolde met with especial critical and audience acclaim. In the same year, the London Wagner Society awarded Anthony Negus the Goodall Award for ‘his devotion to the works of Richard Wagner’. For LFO, Negus has also conducted highly praised productions of Die Zauberflöte and Ariadne auf Naxos.

Elsewhere, recent appearances have included Un ballo in maschera (concert performance) for Chelsea Opera Group in 2023, Der fliegende Holländer (two concert performances) for Grange Park Opera with Sir Bryn Terfel and Rachel Nicholls in 2022, and a guest performance of Die Walküre for English National Opera in 2021. Other guest appearances have included Lulu for the Fondazione Haydn di Bolzano e Trento, Italy (directed by David Pountney), two Beethoven concerts with the George Enescu Orchestra in the Athenaeum in Bucharest, and Parsifal, Der fliegende Holländer and a concert of American music in Lübeck. He has also conducted a performance of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg for Glyndebourne Festival, and Parsifal with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra at the Wellington Festival.

For Welsh National Opera he has conducted more than 150 performances in a wide repertoire, including works by Beethoven, Berg, Gluck, Janáček, James MacMillan (The Sacrifice, broadcast by the BBC and released as a recording by Chandos), Martinů, Mussorgsky, Richard Strauss, Wagner, Weber and, especially, Mozart. Particular highlights of his work with WNO have included Parsifal and several of Richard Strauss’s operas. As an assistant conductor, he worked with Pierre Boulez on Pelléas et Mélisande, with Reginald Goodall on Tristan und Isolde, Parsifal and The Valkyrie, and with Sir Richard Armstrong, Sir Charles Mackerras, Carlo Rizzi, Mark Wigglesworth and Vladimir Jurowski.

Anthony was born near Buckingham, attended Stowe School and studied clarinet and piano at the Royal College of Music. He went on to read Music at Christ Church Oxford, and gained opera conducting and répétiteur experience at the Else Mayer-Lismann Opera Workshop and the London Opera Centre. He studied conducting with Franco Ferrara in Sienna and with George Hurst in the UK. He made his conducting debut in Wuppertal with d’Albert’s Tiefland, and worked as an assistant conductor at Bayreuth Festival and in Hamburg.