Michi Gaigg

The Austrian conductor and leader of the L'Orfeo Barockorchester, Michi Gaigg, was deeply inspired as a student by the lectures given by Nikolaus Harnoncourt at the Salzburg Mozarteum. After completing her violin studies there she commenced learning to play the Baroque violin and studied with Ingrid Seifert and Sigiswald Kuijken.
Michi Gaigg accumulated valuable experience in internationally well-known ensembles such as London Baroque and with conductors such as Frans Brüggen, Alan Curtis, Christopher Hogwood, René Jacobs, Ton Koopman and Hermann Max. Together with Carin van Heerden she founded the L’Orfeo Barockorchester in 1996.
Opera productions are becoming increasingly important in Michi Gaigg’s work. Recently staged works are: Handel’s first opera Almira, Queen of Castille, Georg Philipp Telemann’s Orpheus oder Die wunderbare Beständigkeit der Liebe, Orpheus und Eurydike by Chr. W. Gluck, Zaide by W. A. Mozart, Romeo und Julie by Georg Anton Benda, Joseph Haydn’s Die wüste Insel and a trilogy of early operas by Gioachino Rossini (Il signor Bruschino, La scala di seta und La cambiale di matrimonio).
Michi Gaigg has been teaching at the Institute for Early Music at the Anton Bruckner Private University in Linz since 1993. She is director of the Danube Festival in Strudengau and received two cultural awards by the province of Upper Austria.