The Australian conductor Simone Young has been Chief Conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra since 2022 and is numbered among the most important conductors of our time. In the summers of 2024 and 2025, she will make her debut at the Bayreuther Festspiele, conducting the Ring of the Nibelung.

In the 2024-25 season, she will conduct a new production of Gyögry Kurtág’s Fin de Partie at the Wiener Staatsoper. She will also return to the Opéra de Paris for a revival of Don Carlos, to the Opernhaus Zürich for Salome and to the Staatsoper Unter den Linden for Elektra. Elsewhere this season, she will conduct concerts with the Berliner Philharmoniker, Filarmonica della Scala, Orquesta Nacional de España, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Orchestre de Lyon, Orchestre National de France, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, and the Frankfurt Museumsorchester.

From August 2005 to the end of the 2014-15 season, Simone Young served as  General Director of the Staatsoper Hamburg and General Music Director of the Elbphilharmonie. During these years, she dedicated herself almost exclusively to her role in Hamburg, conducting a wide musical repertoire in premieres and repertoire performances from Mozart to Verdi, Puccini, Wagner, Strauss, Hindemith, Britten, and Henze. She achieved great success with world premieres and numerous German premieres at both the Staatsoper Hamburg and the Elbphilharmonie. Her previous titles include Chief Conductor of the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra from 1998 to 2002 and  Artistic Director of Opera Australia for 2001 to 2003.

Simone Young is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, an honorary doctorate from the universities of Sydney and Melbourne, and is a Member of the Order of Australia and Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in France. She has also been awarded the Goethe Medal and the Brahms Prize of Schleswig-Holstein.