13.1.2025
Florentine Klepper and Kai Röhrig in conversation about the next major production at the Opera & Music Theatre Department: Christian Jost's Dichterliebe.
Interview
© Elsa Okazaki
Deputy Department Head
Head of Institute
Faculty
Curriculum Committee
Univ.-Prof. MMag.
Kai Röhrig
Univ..Prof. of Opera Studies⋅Opera Studies Department⋅Institute for contemporary Music⋅Department of Composition & Music Theory⋅Conducting Department
Conductor Kai Röhrig is passionately dedicated to opera in all its facets. Stylistic diversity and a wide-ranging repertoire characterise his work as a conductor and teacher. He has held a professorship in the Department of Opera since 2014 and has conducted numerous productions at the Mozarteum University since then. Since 2024, he has also led the newly founded Ensemble for Contemporary Music at the Mozarteum and, since October 2025, the international Master’s programme in Conducting New Music.
Kai Röhrig studied at the Cologne University of Music and at the Mozarteum University with Michael Gielen, and also regularly attended summer courses with Rolf Liebermann. He worked as a musical assistant at the Bayreuth Festival and the Salzburg Festival. As a protégé of Bernard Haitink, he was engaged by the European Union Youth Orchestra, the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. For several years, he worked as a musical assistant to Pierre Boulez with various orchestras in Salzburg, Vienna and Paris.
Together with director Florentine Klepper, he has worked on productions of The Turn of the Screw by Benjamin Britten and Falstaff by Giuseppe Verdi in recent years, as well as Dichterliebe. Kai Röhrig provides his students with a comprehensive overview ranging from Baroque repertoire to contemporary works. The major stage works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart also feature regularly in his teaching. Many of his graduates are now successful professionals.
After holding positions as Kapellmeister, Kai Röhrig served for several years as music director of the Salzburg State Theatre and has also appeared as a guest conductor at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, the Hanover State Opera, the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz and the Innsbruck State Theatre. As part of RUHR.2010, he conducted a production of Das Wundertheater. At the Salzburg Festival, he conducted productions of The Magic Flute, The Abduction from the Seraglio and La Cenerentola as part of the Young Singers Project. Recent guest appearances have taken him to the Radiokulturhaus in Vienna, the Richard Strauss Festival, the Mozart Week and the La Chigiana Festival.
Concert engagements have seen Kai Röhrig conduct renowned symphony orchestras, including the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, the Orchestra Academy of the Vienna Philharmonic, the KBS Symphony Orchestra, the Slovenian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Vorarlberg Symphony Orchestra, the Rhineland-Palatinate State Philharmonic Orchestra and the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra as well as the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra. He made his debut at the Berlin Philharmonie conducting the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, and at the Tonhalle Zürich he conducted Symphony No. 14.
Since the beginning of his career, Kai Röhrig has devoted himself intensively to the performance of contemporary music with numerous renowned ensembles and orchestras. He has conducted many premieres and first performances in both concert and opera, including works by composers such as Wolfgang Rihm, Adriana Hölszky, Hans Werner Henze, Mieczysław Weinberg, Manfred Trojahn, Steve Reich, Salvatore Sciarrino, Oscar Jockel, Henry Fourès, Christian Jost and Yann Robin.
