One of the few female conductors active on the continental European scene, Ariane Matiakh has been active in both France and Germany. She has expertise extending to opera as well as symphonic music.

Matiakh was born on January 2, 1980, in Paris. Her parents were both opera singers. Matiakh attended the CNR, the French regional conservatory in the city of Reims. At first, she divided her studies among conducting, piano, singing, and chamber music, and she also took piano accompaniment classes at the CNR Rueil-Malmaison. In graduate studies, Matiakh focused more closely on conducting. She moved to the Hochschule für Musik in Vienna, Austria, studying with Yuji Yuasa and Leopold Hager, and taking master classes with Seiji Ozawa. While living in Vienna, she sang in the Arnold Schoenberg Choir, which exposed her to two highly original conductors, Ádám Fischer and Nikolaus Harnoncourt.

In 2005, after graduating from her program in Vienna, Matiakh became the assistant conductor of the Orchestra of the French National Opera of Montpellier. She led the Orchestra of the French National Opera of Montpellier in a variety of orchestral concerts, and she received a classic big break in 2007 when she was asked to conduct the Shostakovich Symphony No. 7 with the Orchestre National de Montpellier, replacing an ailing James Conlon. After this, Matiakh began to win invitations to conduct various regional orchestras in France and also in Germany, whose language she spoke fluently. She conducted Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro at the Komische Oper Berlin, and Johann Strauss II's Die Fledermaus at the Halle Opera.

In 2014, Matiakh was made a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. She has also been invited to Scandinavia by several groups. In the middle and late 2010s, Matiakh often conducted major German orchestras -- the Berlin Radio Symphony and the Dresden Philharmonic -- as well as several French orchestras and opera company performances. Matiakh made her recording debut in 2015 on the Capriccio label, leading the Deutschland Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz in an album of works by Johanna Doderer. She has conducted world premieres of operas by Richard Dubugnon and Bechara El Khoury. Her growing discography includes several recordings with the Berlin Radio Symphony, including an album featuring Richard Strauss' Aus Italien, Op. 16, and Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari's Suite Veneziana. From 2018 to 2020, she was General Music Director of the Staatskapelle Halle. In the early 2020s, Matiakh made debuts with major groups, including the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, and the Sinfonieorchester Basel, with which she released a recording of the Seven Stars Symphony of Charles Koechlin in 2022. ~ James Manheim, Rovi