Peter is one of the UK’s most experienced opera conductors, with a particular specialism for Wagner. He has worked on numerous full Ring Cycles, including five seasons at Bayreuth, also at ROH, Nuremberg, Strasbourg, Longborough Festival and with the LPO. In the last two years he has concluded a 4-year project conducting Jonathan Dove’s innovative reduction of the Ring Cycle for the Grimeborn Festival at the Hackney Empire, conducted Siegfried, Die Walküre and Tristan und Isolde at St John’s Smith Square for the London Opera Company, and twice returned to Bayreuth to assist on the new Ring Cycle.

During 8 years in Germany he worked as Head of Music and Kapellmeister at Staatstheater Nürnberg, where he conducted around 150 performances of a wide repertory including Peter Grimes, works by Verdi, Puccini, various Spieloper, and the major operas of Mozart. He spent a season at the Hamburgische Staatsoper, and assisted at the Bayreuther Festspiele on the millennial Ring Cycle. He co-founded and for nearly 20 years was co-Artistic Director of the Internationales Kammermusikfestival Nürnberg, where he conducted numerous Britten chamber operas and several operatic world premieres. 

He has a repertoire of over 120 operas, of which he has conducted around 70, for UK companies including Opera North, Welsh National Opera, English Touring Opera and Opera Holland Park and in Australia, Singapore, Hungary and the Czech Republic. 

He has a large and varied symphonic repertoire and has worked with many orchestras and ensembles in Europe and UK including the Nürnberger Philharmoniker, Wiener Symphoniker, Orchestra dell’ Teatro Comunale di Bologna, City of London Sinfonia, Orchestras of Opera North and Welsh National Opera, Southbank Sinfonia, Aurora Orchestra and National Youth Orchestra of Scotland.

He is a Professor at the Royal College of Music and a regular coach on the Jette Parker Artists Programme at the Royal Opera, where he also works regularly on the music staff. He is the recently appointed Principal Conductor of the Lambeth Orchestra, one of London’s oldest and finest amateur orchestras, and Music Director of the London Opera Company.

Peter studied Modern Languages at Cambridge, then piano at the Royal Academy of Music. He began his career as a member of the ENO music staff, before moving to the Royal Opera, where he worked with some of the world’s greatest singers and conductors.

Current and future plans include conducting Der fliegende Holländer for Opera Holland Park,  Parsifal Act 3 with Temple Music Foundation, Götterdämmerung with London Opera Company, and various symphonic concerts with Lambeth Orchestra and Royal Tunbridge Wells Symphony Orchestra.