Principal Guest Conductor Malmö Opera
Patrik Ringborg is one of Sweden’s most acclaimed conductors, with a repertoire spanning over 90 operas and an impressive body of concert works. He has established a respected career across Europe, particularly in Germany and his native Sweden.
At Gothenburg Opera, during his tenure as Principal Guest Conductor, he conducted all Wagner productions and later returned for new productions of Salome, Ariadne auf Naxos, Notorious by Hans Gefors (World Premiere), and Herr Arnes penningar by Gösta Nystroem. He is Principal Guest Conductor of Malmö Opera, where he conducted Salome during Spring 2025 and returns this season with Lohengrin. With the Royal Swedish Opera, he has conducted Parsifal, Die Walküre and Elektra. He has also been a frequent guest with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra with whom highlights include conducting the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony in 2008 and the Birgit Nilsson Prize Ceremony (awarded to Yo-Yo Ma) in 2022.
Celebrated for his contributions to Sweden’s musical landscape, he was the first conductor to have been awarded the Opera Prize by the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper (for the productions of Parsifal and Das Rheingold) in 2014. The following year, he was named the most influential person in Swedish classical music by the magazine Opus. In 2022, he received the gold medal Litteris et Artibus from King Carl XVI Gustaf, and in 2023, he was awarded the gold Hugo Alfvén medal. He is also a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music.
His work in Germany began at Theater Freiburg where he was appointed Deputy Music Director. After this he was appointed Principal Conductor of Aalto-Theater Essen where he conducted over 20 operas as well as symphony concerts. He served as General Music Director at Staatstheater Kassel where he conducted 27 new opera productions. Highlights included Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, and Tannhäuser; Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten, Der Rosenkavalier, and Elektra; Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte and
Così fan tutte; Puccini’s Manon Lescaut and Turandot, as well as more modern works including Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites, Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth from Mtsensk, Aribert Reimann's Lear, and Hans Werner Henze's Orpheus.
Other opera engagements in Germany include Oper Köln, where he conducted Dame Kiri Te Kanawa’s farewell performances in Der Rosenkavalier. He has also worked for Semperoper Dresden, Deutsche Oper Berlin, and Deutsches Nationaltheater Weimar. Most recently, in 2025, he made his Bregenzer Festspiele debut conducting Weber’s Der Freischütz.
He has collaborated with prestigious stage directors including Christof Loy, Keith Warner, Peter Konwitschny, Ingmar Bergman, Götz Friedrich, Dietrich Hilsdorf, Staffan Valdemar Holm, and Stephen Langridge.
He has conducted over 30 German orchestras, including the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, Münchner Rundfunkorchester, hr-Sinfonieorchester, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln, and Gürzenich Orchestra Köln.
Further afield, he has worked with the Canadian Opera Company, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Norwegian National Opera, and Vienna Volksoper.
This biography is for information only and should not be reproduced.
Autumn Sonata, Hong Kong Philharmonic and Finish National Opera
Hong Kong, October 2019
“the star of the show was Fagerlund's score, a churning kaleidoscope of sonorities veering back and forth between chilling transparency and gut-wrenching outbursts. The autumn of the title is surely a metaphor, but under the conductor Patrik Ringborg the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra wielded such an extensive palette of musical colour you could practically hear the leaves change.”
Ken Smith, Opera Magazine
Suor Angelica, Malmö Opera
April 2022
“The low brass in Patrick Ringborg’s orchestra seemed to drip tears”
Andrew Mellor, Opera Magazine
Hugo Alfvén: Complete Orchestral Songs
Naxos Sweden: Released September 2025
“Many of the orchestrations are reasonably simple and do not demand a lot from the orchestra. The dramatic ones are more challenging, but at whatever level of complexity they’re all performed very well under Ringborg’s direction. I am very glad this recording came my way. It opened me up to a composer I had heretofore disregarded. I took increasing delight in this album the more I listened to it.”
- Robert A. Moore, American Record Guide
Salome
Malmö Opera, February 2025
"Patrik Ringborg conducted well: he was good on colour and excellent on stage balance"
Andrew Mellor, Opera Magazine
Der Freischütz, Bregenzer Festspiele
Bregenz, July 2025
Musically, this ”Freischütz” scores compared to last year in yet another respect: Patrik Ringborg’s debut in Bregenz and at the helm of the once again brilliant Wiener Symphoniker is remarkable. The former Freiburg Principal Conductor and later interim Music Director is an expert in the grand Romantic musical arcs and shines with his incredibly exciting conducting. - Alexander Dick, Braunschweiger Zeitung
Under the sensitive direction of Patrik Ringborg, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra elicits a colourful expressiveness from Weber's score, which oscillates between dramatic power and chamber music precision. The integration of noise and sound levels into the orchestral structure is particularly noteworthy. - Andreas Marte, Vorarlberger Nachrichten
“Bregenz Festival has engaged outstanding singers, confidently supported by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, conducted for the first time by the Swede Patrik Ringborg. Anyone who wants to experience dramatic and poetic musical theatre will certainly get their money's worth.” - Klaus-Peter Mayr, Ausburger Allgemeiner
“the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, broadcast from the Festspielhaus, sounds warm and romantic...with maestro Patrik Ringborg inspiring a pre-Wagnerian blend of sounds.” - Peter Krause, Concerti
"the Vienna Symphony Orchestra under Patrik Ringborg, mixed up to create a huge sound, plays excellently" - Jürgen Kan, Alb Bote Münsingen
"Is there a danger that the music is being pushed into the background by the Las Vegas-like show effects? Yes. But that doesn't happen in the current Bregenz "Freischütz," thanks primarily to the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and Patrik Ringborg. The top Viennese orchestra plays with impressive precision, soulfulness, and dedication...And the Swedish conductor delves even deeper in his interpretation than Enrique Mazzola did last year, unearthing moods in the early Romantic work that are magically captivating in their diversity and intensity." – Stefan Ender, Der Standard
National Symphony Orchestra, Ireland
Dublin, November 2024
Authoritative and masterful, Ringborg swept us along on the emotional journey that is Tchaikovsky’s Symphony no. 5 in E minor. The opening was dark and meditative, its melancholic mood contrasting with the more playful, almost mischievous second theme. Ringborg’s careful attention to the dynamics drew a rich, expressive performance from the NSO, allowing the brass and strings to shimmer and then roar with intensity. The second movement contains the glorious horn solo which was beautifully shaped before the cellos reiterated it with deep expressiveness. Ringborg whipped up the full forces of the orchestra to unleash the sonic boom of the ffff which Tchaikovsky notates in the score. Mercurial and graceful, the third movement was charmingly done while Ringborg and the NSO delivered a thrilling finale with incandescent tremolos, blazing brass and scurrying strings.
BachTrack
Malmö SymfoniOrkester
Malmö, December 2022
Conductor Patrik Ringborg makes the Malmö Symphony Orchestra an enthusiastic instrument at Malmö Live, and casts a spell on the myth of the doom of nature with Alfvén's grand orchestral palette and cunning leitmotifs: chromatically winding like Richard Strauss, glittering dancer like Bizet, and blackened like Weill and Sibelius.
DN.se
Romeo et Juliette, Malmö Opera
Malmö, November 2022
Conductor Patrik Ringborg captures these key moments, where Gounod’s maddeningly adept counterpoint gives way to Wagnerian soaring harmonies, and leads the Malmö Opera Orchestra through delicate, chamber-musically meandering passages. “Peace? Never!” says the rumbling, sweeping chorus that rounds out Act Three as Roméo is sentenced to exile after stabbing Tybalt to death in a knife duel in the Capulet’s backyard. The melodrama becomes a big theater and hits directly in the solar plexus.
newsbeezer.com
Orchestra redeems Gounod's fine score really well - all under the direction of Patrik Ringborg, who has just received a major Swedish prize for his musical merits and has been associated with Malmö Opera as 1st guest conductor.
operaensvenner.dk
Patrik Ringborg - orchestral repertoire
| http://www.ringb.org/en/konzert/ |
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Patrik Ringborg - opera repertoire
| http://www.ringb.org/en/opern/ |
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