Biography
Approved for all ages.
Stijn Saveniers is a versatile conductor, researcher, and coach.
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He is the artistic director of Volksopera, an Antwerp-based initiative dedicated to comic musical theatre. As a researcher, he is affiliated with the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp, where he focuses on musical interpretation, theatre music, and artistic research methodologies. Within the conservatoire’s vocal department, he serves as a repertoire coach. He is also involved with the Study Centre for Flemish Music, contributing to new critical editions of musical scores. For nearly two decades, he was a member of HERMESensemble, Antwerp’s contemporary music collective.
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In May 2025, he successfully defended his doctoral dissertation, La Grande Bouffe: challenges in the performance of musical comedy.
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Stijn Saveniers studied at the conservatoires of Leuven and Maastricht, where he obtained Master’s degrees in cello (under Mirel Iancovici) and orchestral conducting (under Edmond Saveniers). He was also awarded the Hustinckx Prize in Maastricht.
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Since then, he has conducted a wide range of productions, including opera, operetta, ballet, symphonic and chamber repertoire, oratorio, and contemporary music. His pronounced affinity with the human voice, combined with his extensive experience as a répétiteur-pianist, led naturally to a focus on music theatre repertoire.
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It was in the often-neglected comic repertoire that his expertise would take shape—where humour and music converge in a blend of spoken word, parlando singing, and sweeping lyrical moments. He has conducted productions of La Périchole, La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein, Les Bavards, Monsieur Choufleuri restera chez lui, La Fille du Tambour-Major (Offenbach), Der Vogelhändler (Zeller), Das Land des Lächelns (Lehár), Eine Nacht in Venedig, Die Fledermaus (Strauss), Clivia (Dostal), Les Mousquetaires au couvent (Varney), and La Belle de Cadix (Lopez).
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His growing passion for the genre led to the founding of Volksopera in 2014, with the aim of preserving comic musical theatre musically, while simultaneously renewing its performative language through confrontation with contemporary theatrical paradigms.
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With Volksopera, he has realised productions of Le Docteur Miracle (Lecocq), Cox and Box and The Zoo (Sullivan), The Idea (Holst), Alles Schwindel (Spoliansky), L’île de Tulipatan (Offenbach), as well as a research-based project around The Bear (Walton). He also created the operetta podcast Boze Bejaarden, written by Annelies Verbeke and Gaea Schoeters, with adaptations and new music by Annelies Van Parys, in co-production with Wunderbaum and HERMESensemble, broadcast by NPO 4.
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The 2025–2026 season promises a wide range of projects once again, including the ballet production Grande Finale with Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, an artistic-research contribution to a reimagined staging of Stockhausen’s STOP, a newly written pastiche of operetta scenes, and a production of Mark Adamo’s Little Women. Looking further ahead, he is preparing a revival of the Belgian operetta Brueghelkermis and developing plans for new operetta commissions.
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The doctoral dissertation La Grande Bouffe is publicly accessible via:
https://repository.uantwerpen.be/docman/irua/127fb2motoM7b