Paul Connelly

Paul Connelly, trained at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, gained his first professional experience as an assistant at the opera houses in Boston, Santa Fe and San Francisco and made his debut at the age of twenty-four as conductor of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess at the Houston Grand Opera. In San Francisco, he was Music Director of the Affiliate Artists Programme for Opera and was awarded an Exxon/Arts Endowment Conducting Fellowship. At the invitation of Mikhail Baryshnikov, he joined the American Ballet Theatre as Principal Conductor, where he had the opportunity to work with choreographers such as George Balanchine, Kenneth MacMillan, Jerome Robbins, Twyla Tharp and Anthony Tudor. At the same time, he was invited as a guest conductor with the New York City Ballet, Nureyev and Friends, and as Music Director of Baryshnikov and Co. He was also appointed Principal Guest Conductor of the National Ballet of Canada and worked on film and television productions including Baryshnikov’s Don Quixote with the ABT, Live from Lincoln Center and the series Dance in America. His major opera productions during this period included conducting Benjamin Britten’s Death in Venice, Claude Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande and Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas.

Engagements throughout Europe followed, including the Staatsoper Unter den Linden and the Deutsche Oper Berlin, as well as the Ballet de l’Opéra de Paris, where several productions were filmed under his baton, including Giselle, John Neumeier’s Sylvia, George Balanchine’s Jewels and a programme of works by Roland Petit. 

Further appearances have taken him to the Opéra de Nice, Opéra National de Bordeaux, Budapest State Opera, Den Norske Opera Oslo, Zurich Opera House, Royal Ballet London, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Het Nationale Ballet Amsterdam, Berlin State Ballet, Tokyo Ballet, Finnish National Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Korean National Ballet and the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, where, at the invitation of Riccardo Muti, he conducted, among others, Rossini’s Il turco in Italia, Mozart’s The Magic Flute and Don Giovanni as well as film productions of Giselle, Notre-Dame de Paris and most recently Alexei Ratmansky’s Coppélia. He also collaborated with the Danish Radio Orchestra and the Orchestre Colonne in Paris. In 2025, he was invited to the Teatro San Carlo, where he conducted a concert of American repertoire, among others.

In 1991 Paul Connelly made his debut at the Vienna State Opera with a ballet gala, followed by Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia, and has maintained an intensive association with the company ever since. To date, he has conducted The Nutcracker, Don Quixote, Romeo and Juliet, The Sleeping Beauty, La Fille mal gardée, Giselle, Jewels and Swan Lake with the Vienna State Ballet. In the 2025/26 season, he will conduct the premiere of Alexei Ratmanskyʼs Callirhoe.

Paul Connelly’s DVD recordings include Mauro Bigonzetti’s Caravaggio with the Berlin State Ballet, Rudolf Nureyev’s The Nutcracker with the Vienna State Ballet and Christian Spuck’s Nutcracker and Mouse King with the Zurich Ballet.