Prof. Stewart Emerson

Prof. Stewart Emerson was born in London. There he was first a scholar of the Junior Department and then a student of the Royal College of Music. He studied piano with Professor Harry Platts and Professor John Barstow as well as conducting with Professor Christopher Adey and singing with Professor Lyndon van der Pump. He was awarded the Margot Hamilton Prize for piano, the Percy Buck Conducting Prize for Britten's "A Midsummer Night's Dream", the Michael Mudie Prize for opera conducting and the Ruby Hope repetiteur scholarship. During this time he taught music history and theory in the Junior Department and directed the choir and the music theatre department. In the early 1980s, Stewart Emerson was deputy conductor for Abbey Opera and conducted the Apollo Singers, the St. Paul's Festival Orchestra and Enfield Grand Opera. Following his move to Cologne in 1984, he worked first in the opera studio and then with the ensemble as repetiteur with additional conducting responsibilities at the Cologne Opera. At the same time he taught at the Cologne Academy of Music. In 1991 he became head of the opera studio of the Cologne Opera, with whom he conducted performances of "La finta semplice", "Alcina", "Der Leuchtturm", "Riders to the sea" and the premiere of "Der Kinderkreuzzug". In 1995 Stewart Emerson was appointed Professor at the Academy of Music Hanns Eisler Berlin, where he is Musical Director of Music Theatre/Opera.