Joana Mallwitz is chief conductor of the Nuremberg State Theater since 2019. From 2014 to 2018 she was General Music Director of Theater Erfurt, the youngest person in Europe to hold such a position. The German born musician made her debut at twenty, when in 2006 she conducted Puccini’s Madama Butterfly as a last minute replacement. This launched her on a very successful career path that has taken her all over the world. Mallwitz was named ‘Conductor of the Year’ in 2019 by German monthly Opernwelt. The Süddeutsche Zeitung praised Mallwitz as a ‘stage director in sound’.

In Nuremberg Mallwitz has conducted performances of Prokovieff’s War and Peace and Wagner’s Lohengrin, among other productions, to much acclaim. 

In 2020 Joana Mallwitz became the first female conductor in history to lead an entire opera production at the Salzburg Festival, conducting Mozart’s Cosí fan tutte. In the 2022/23 season Mallwitz will make her debut with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, conducting Dvořák’s Rusalka for Dutch National Opera