Conductor
World excluding South America
Natalia Salinas is currently recognized as a leading figure among the new generation of orchestra conductors in Argentina and Latin America. With a constantly expanding international career, she has built a solid reputation across different continents. Her operatic debut was in 2016 with Così fan tutte at Teatro Argentino de La Plata. She also worked regularly at Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires.
Since moving to France in 2019, she has increasingly engaged in European activities, conducting at festivals and theaters in France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Italy. Her European operatic debut took place in 2021 at the Taschenopernfestival in Salzburg, premiering Wolfgang Mitterer’s Der Kuss. She later conducted the Magdeburg Philharmonic Orchestra and worked with the Musikfabrik Ensemble. This journey reaches a significant point of arrival with her 2024/25 season debut at Oper Köln, where she conducted Astor Piazzolla’s opera María de Buenos Aires.
In 2023 she had her operatic debut in Italy, at Teatro delle Muse in Ancona with La tragédie de Carmen and she conducted at Teatro Colon del Buenos Aires Der Jasager by Kurt Weill and Marta Lambertini’s Alice in Wonderland. The same year she also led ballet performances for the first time at Konzert und Theater St. Gallen, where she had debuted in 2022. In 2022, she made a historic presentation of Alberto Ginastera’s TURBAE ad Passionem Gregorianam in Argentina, supported by the Boosey & Hawkes publishing house, the Paul Sacher Foundation and the composer’s family.
Natalia Salinas was recognized in 2023 with the Established Orchestra Conductor award from the National Classical Awards of Argentina. She previously earned the Breakthrough Artist Award as an Orchestra Conductor from the Music Critics Association of Argentina in 2021. In 2024, she was selected by the Royal Opera House’s Jette Parker Artists Programme for the Observership for Orchestra Conductors and invited to participate in the Opéra National du Rhin observership program. Additionally, she was chosen for the Women Opera Makers Workshop at the 2024 Festival d’Aix-en-Provence.
Currently pursuing the last year of a Franco-German PhD in Orchestral Conducting at Université de Strasbourg (Haute Ecole des Arts du Rhin, HEAR) and Hochschule für Musik Freiburg. She also holds a master’s degree specializing in 20th and 21st-century music from HEAR, a Diploma on Latin American Composers from the National University of Mexico, and a licentiate degree in orchestra conducting from Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Her foundational training as a pianist began at the Conservatorio Provincial de Música de Santa Cruz in Argentina.
Highlights of season 2025/26 include symphonic concerts with Mexico City Philharmonic Orchestra, La Serena Symphony Orchestra in Chile, Ensemble Phoenix in Basel, National Symphony Orchestra of Colombia in Medillin, Minas Gerais Philharmonic Orchestra in Belo Horizonte.
