Ingo Metzmacher was born in hanover. He studied piano, music theory and conducting in his hometown and in Salzburg and Cologne. He found his first artistic home in Frankfurt, with the Ensemble Modern and the Frankfurt Opera under the artistic directorship of Michael Gielen.

His international career began in 1988, during Gerard Mortier’s tenure as director of the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels, when he stepped in to conduct a new production of Franz Schreker’s Der Ferne Klang.

In 1997 he was appointed General Music Director of the Hamburg Opera, where in the course of the next eight seasons he conducted a series of internationally acclaimed productions, many of them in collaboration with stage director Peter Konwitschny. Hightlights include Lohengrin, Wozzeck, Frieschütz, Don Carlos and Moses und Aron. He then became Chief Conductor of the Netherlands Opera in Amsterdam. Highlights of his tenure include performances of Henze’s The Bassarids directed by Peter Stein, Die tote Stadt and Die Gezeichneten with the Concertgebouw Orchestra, a cycle of the three Da Ponte operas by Mozart in productions of Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito and a Pierre Audi production of Messiaen’s Saint François d’Assise.

From 2007 to 2010 he was Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. His thematic concert cycles during this time entitled "From the German Soul, Breakthrough 1909" and "Temptation" as well as a series of Casual Concerts moderated by himself made a lasting impact on Berlin’s music life. Various tours brought the orchestra and him to Hamburg, Cologne, Bonn, Baden-Baden, Paris, Brussels, Edinburgh, London, Vienna, Rimini, Meran, Madrid , Zagreb, Riga, Vilnius, Warsaw, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Beijing.

Highlights of recent seasons have included his apparences at the Salzburg Festival, where he conducted the world premiere of Wolfgang Rihm’s opera Dionysos, Prometeo and Al gran sole carico d’amore by Luigi Non, Die Soldaten by Bernd Alois Zimmermann as well as Gawain by Sir Harrison Birtwistle at the Grand Théâtre in Geneva (new production of Der Ring des Nibelungen staged by Dieter Dorn); The Rake’s Progress and Die tote Stadt for the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Königskinder, Tristan und Isolde, Der ferne Klang, Tannhäuser, From the House of the Dead, The Nose, Palestrina for the Zurich Opera House; Il Prigioniero and Suor Angelica for Madrid’s Teatro Real; Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, Parsifal and Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny for the Vienna State Opera; The Rake’s Progress, Al gran sole carico d’Amore for the Berlin State Opera; and a concert performance of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Luzifers Tanz with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in their Musica Viva series. In concert he appeared with leading ochestras including the Vienna, Berlin and Munich Philarmonic, the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra de Paris, the Czech Philharmonic, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester, the Russian National Orchestra, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, the Filarmonica della Scala and the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

He was invited by the Holland Festival for a Luigi Nono project including three programmes as well as by the Salzburg Festival for a new production of Franz Schubert’s opera Fierrabras staged by Peter Stein.

Ingo Metzmacher’s discography includes live recordings of his New Year’s Eve concerts in Hamburg from 1999 to 2004, entitled “Who is afraid of 20^th Century Music?”, a complete recording of Karl Amadeus Harmann’s symphonies with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Olivier Messiaen’s Illuminations of the Beyond… with the Vienna Philarmonic Orchestra, Hans Pfitzner’s Von deutscher Seele and Englebert Humperdinck’s Königskinder with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and a live recording of Lady Macbeth of Mzensk from the Vienna tate Opera. Available on DVD are the Salzburg Festival productions of Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Die Soldaten from 2012 as well as Wolfgang Rihm’s Dionysos from 2010, the Zurich Opera House production of Engelbert Humperdinck’s Köningskinder, Pierre Audi’s Grammy-nomiated production of Saint François d’Assise by Oliver Messiaen for the Holland Festival 2008 and the Amsterdam productions of Mozart’s Da Ponte operas directed by Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito.

Over the last years Ingo Metmacher has appeared as a pianist in recitals with Christine Schäfer, Matthias Goerne and Christian Gerhaher at the Aspen Music Festival, the Wigmore Hall in London, the Schubertiade Schwarzenberg as well as at the Salzburg Festival.

In his book “Vorhang auf! Oper entdecken und erleben” published in 2009, Ingo Metzmacher presents operas from four centuries and explains the making of a music theatre production. He is also the author of “Keine Angst vor neuen Tönen” published in 2005, a passionate plea for pioneering composers such as Luigi Nono, Charles Ives, Olivier Messiaen, Arnold Schönberg, Edgard Varèse, Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage.