Marc Minkowski studied the bassoon before turning to conducting at a very young age and attending the academy of Maestro Charles Bruck. At the age of 19, he founded the ensemble “Les Musiciens du Louvre,” of which he remains the artistic director to this day. The ensemble was initially focused on revitalizing Baroque performance practices, soon also turned to the work of French composers, and subsequently expanded its repertoire to include works by Handel, Mozart, Rossini, Offenbach, Bizet, and Wagner. Today, Marc Minkowski and “Les Musiciens du Louvre” tour throughout Europe and worldwide. Marc Minkowski is also the Music Director of “Boston Baroque” — the oldest continuously performing period-instrument orchestra in North America. He succeeded Martin Pearlman, who founded the ensemble in 1973, from the 2026/27 season onward.

As a guest conductor, he is regularly invited to all major international opera houses and venues, such as the Berlin State Opera Unter den Linden, the Vienna State Opera, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Teatro alla Scala in Milan, Opernhaus Zürich, the Opéra National de Paris, the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, and the Salzburg Festival. He works with renowned orchestras such as the Vienna Philharmonic, the Vienna Symphony, the Berlin Philharmonic, the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Dresden Festival Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, as well as period-instrument ensembles such as the Basel Chamber Orchestra, Music of the Baroque in Chicago, and the English Baroque Soloists.

In the 2026/27 season, he returns to the podium of the Berlin State Opera Unter den Linden for a series of Le Nozze di Figaro. At the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, he conducts a new production of Les Pêcheurs de perles and at the Deutsche Oper Berlin he will conduct a staged production of the St Matthew Passion.

The season is complemented by numerous concert engagements. In addition to several appearances with Boston Baroque (opening concert in September, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s concert at the turn of the year, and Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater), there are several concerts with Les Musiciens du Louvre, including Handel’s Concerti Grossi, a tour with a Mozart program in Switzerland, several concert performances of Hippolyte et Aricie, as well as further guest concerts with different programs, among others in Turin, Udine, Milan, Toulouse, Madrid, and of course Paris.

As a guest conductor, he returns to the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, where he will be heard in Bruckner’s 8th Symphony and an exciting additional program featuring film music, Bernstein, and Ravel. With the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra he conducts Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, before returning to Prague Philharmonia in February 2027 and appearing as a guest in Madrid with the Orquesta Comunidad de Madrid. Music of the Baroque in Chicago is also looking forward to welcoming him again for concerts. Further concert engagements take him to Warsaw (Warsaw Philharmonic), to Copenhagen Phil for Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, before the season concludes with a concert by the Orquestra Filarmónica de Gran Canaria in Las Palmas.

Recent important opera projects include highly acclaimed new productions of Offenbach’s Robinson Crusoé at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto at the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía in Valencia, and Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito at Opernhaus Zürich. He has also conducted, among others, Giuseppe Verdi’s Don Carlos at the Grand Théâtre de Genève, W. A. Mozart’s Mitridate re di Ponto, Le nozze di Figaro, and Don Giovanni at the Berlin State Opera Unter den Linden, as well as a staged production of Joseph Haydn’s The Creation at Opera Cologne.

Marc Minkowski can today be regarded as an active promoter of classical music. In addition to the aforementioned founding of “Les Musiciens du Louvre,” he launched the Ré Majeure Festival in 2011, was General Director of the Opéra National de Bordeaux from 2016 to 2021, Artistic Director of Mozartwoche in Salzburg from 2013 to 2017, and Artistic Advisor of the orchestra “Ensemble Kanazawa” in Japan from 2018 to 2022, with whom he still maintains a close collaboration.

In 2018, he was awarded the Order of the French Legion of Honour.