Aivis Greters joins Queen Sonja Singing Competition 2027 as conductor!

Latvian conductor Aivis Greters will join the Queen Sonja Singing Competition for its 2027 edition. Currently Principal Guest Conductor of Gothenburg Opera, his work spans opera, symphonic repertoire and choral music.

At Gothenburg Opera, Greters has conducted performances of Bizet’s Carmen, Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta, Mozart’s The Magic Flute and Verdi’s La traviata. Having previously worked at the house as Kapellmeister, he has developed an operatic repertoire encompassing different languages, styles and demands on the relationship between singers and orchestra. He also conducted the gala celebrating the opera house’s 30th anniversary.

His work with voices began before his appointments in the opera house. In 2018, he became Artistic Director and conductor of the Latvian youth choir Kamēr…. Under his direction, the ensemble won the Grand Prix at the Tolosa Choral Contest that year, followed by the European Grand Prix for Choral Singing in Arezzo in 2019.

Greters is already familiar to Oslo audiences. In March 2026, he conducted the Oslo Philharmonic and its choir in a programme featuring Brahms’s Schicksalslied, Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms and Pēteris Vasks’s The Fruit of Silence. The concerts also included the world premiere of the orchestral version of Herman Vogt’s Lux Manifesta, with its first two movements on the programme.

Alongside his operatic work, Greters has appeared with orchestras including the Wiener Symphoniker, Bamberger Symphoniker and Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin.

The competition will take place on Friday 3 September, when six finalists perform opera arias with the Oslo Philharmonic at Oslo Concert Hall. For the singers, the final offers the opportunity to perform with the orchestra before an international jury, a live audience and viewers around the world through OperaVision.

If you’d like to catch Aivis in action before then, he returns to the Oslo Philharmonic on 26 November 2026, conducting a programme featuring cellist Truls Mørk at Oslo Concert Hall.