French conductor Emmanuel Villaume was educated at the Strasbourg Conservatoire, the Khâgne (a two-year preparatory program), and the Sorbonne, where his courses included musicology, literature, and philosophy. Villaume joined the Opéra National du Rhin as dramaturge and stage manager, and he continued his studies in conducting with Spiros Argiris. Villaume also served as an assistant conductor to Seiji Ozawa. From 2000 to 2010, he was the music director of the Spoleto Festival USA. Villaume gave performances at the Metropolitan Opera, the Dallas Opera, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and La Fenice, and conducted concerts with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Quebec Symphony Orchestra, the Montréal Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris, the Beethoven Orchester Bonn, the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, and the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra, among numerous other orchestras. In 2015, Villaume was named the music director of the Dallas Opera, and he is the chief conductor of the Prague Philharmonia. He has recorded for Erato, Warner Classics, Deutsche Grammophon, Timpani, Naxos, Dynamic, and ArtHaus Musik. ~ Blair Sanderson, Rovi