Principal Resident Conductor of the Chemnitz Opera House since 2020 he was previously Principal Resident Conductor and Deputy Music Director of the Opera Houses in Krefeld and Mönchengladbach from 2016 to 2020. Diego Martin-Etxebarria first came to international attention when he was awarded First Prize, the Hideo Saito Award and the Asahi Award at the Tokyo Conducting Competition in 2015.
Recent and future Highlights include opera (Janacek's The cunning little Vixen, Humperdinck's Hänsel and Gretel, Mozart's The abduction from the Seraglio and Léhar's The Merry Widow) and ballet (Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker and Swan Lake as well as Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet and Cinderella) at the Theater Chemnitz as well as concerts leading the Robert Schumann Philharmonie. He will also give his debut with the Real Filharmonía de Galicia. He will make his debut with Armenia Philharmonic Orchestra and Murcia Symphony Orchestra in Madrid.
He has been invited by international orchestras such as the Osaka Philharmonic, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony, Nagoya Philharmonic, Kansai Philharmonic, Osaka Symphony, Central Aichi Symphony, National Symphony Orchestra of Colombia, Philharmonisches Orchester Freiburg or the St. Petersburg State Capella Symphony. In his homeland he has conducted the Spanish Radio and Television Symphony, Bilbao Symphony, Euskadi Symphony, Galicia Symphony, Barcelona Symphony, Tenerife Symphony, the City of Granada Orchestra, Málaga Philharmonic, Oviedo Filarmonía, Vallés Symphony as well as the Spanish National Orchestra.
In the operatic field, he has conducted Paul-Heinz Dittrich's Die Verwandlung and Die Blinden at the Berliner Staatsoper; Puccini's La Bohème at the Theater Augsburg, Donizetti's Don Pasquale in Terrassa; Rita at the Volksbühne in Berlin; L'Elisir d'amore in Vigo, Ourense, Pontevedra and the Teatro Principal de Palma; Montsalvatge's Puss in boots at the Teatro Real in Madrid; Mozart's Die Zauberflöte at the Kleines Haus Dresden, the Theater Krefeld-Mönchengladbach and the Theater Chemnitz; Bizet's Carmen at the Santa Florentina Festival, Adés' Powder Her Face at the Arriaga Theater in Bilbao; Llorca's Tres sombreros de copa at the Zarzuela Theater in Madrid; Dvorak's Rusalka, Humperdinck's Hänsel und Gretel, Menotti's The Consul, Verdi's Nabucco, Puccini's Gianni Schicchi, Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana, Kálmán's Die Faschingsfee, Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld and Dvorak's Rusalka at the Theaters in Krefeld and Mönchengladbach as well as Wagner's Tristan und Isolde and Verdi's Aida at the Theater Chemnitz.
His recording highlights include the album “El lament de la terra” for SONY with music by Albert Guinovart conducting the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra, Udo Zimmermann's opera “Der Schuhu und die fliegende Prinzessin” for Deutschlandfunk, the CD "Intimitats" with award-winning music by composer Marc Timón, the lyric comedy "La Viola d'Or" by Enric Morera (Enderrock Award for Best Classical Album Review 2016), the DVD "Sinfokids 2” at the head of the Euskadi Symphony Orchestra and the opera by Joaquim Serra Tempesta esvaïda.
Martin-Etxebarria began his musical studies at the Conservatories of Amurrio and Vitoria and graduated in orchestra conducting at the University of Music of Catalonia. He was granted by the Humboldt Foundation and the DAAD-La Caixa for post-graduate studies in opera conducting at the Hochschulen in Weimar, Dresden and the Academia Chigiana in Siena with Gianluigi Gelmetti. Other conductors who have influenced his career include Riccardo Frizza, Donato Renzetti, Dima Slobodeniouk, Christopher Seaman, Jesús Lopez Cobos, Titus Engel and Lutz Köhler.
