About Carlos as a conductor
Melbourne-based Mexican conductor Carlos del Cueto was formerly Junior Fellow in Conducting at the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) in Manchester, as well as Head of Music Staff at English Touring Opera and a winner of the BBC Performing Arts Fund Music Fellowship scheme.
Since moving to Melbourne in 2023, Carlos has worked with Victorian Opera as chorus master (Eucalyptus), assisted Jaime Martin at the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, where he also regularly gives pre-performance talks. Carlos is Music Director of the Tudor Choristers, and in 2024 has conducted orchestras such as the Preston and Stonnington Symphony Orchestra, as well as the Northern Rivers Symphony Orchestra, among others.
Carlos first began to conduct at the age of nineteen under the tutelage of American choral conductor John Guthmiller. After continuing conducting studies with Peter Stark in London, Carlos went on to learn from or work with Sir Mark Elder, Sir Roger Norrington, Paavo Järvi, Juanjo Mena, Ivor Bolton, and George Benjamin.
In 2011, Carlos completed a PhD in Music at Clare College, Cambridge, focusing on historical aspects of nineteenth-century Italian opera. While at Cambridge he conducted nearly all the university’s established orchestras. Among them, he was principal conductor of the Cambridge University Symphony Orchestra (2006-08) and conducting scholar of the Cambridge University Musicological Society (CUMS 1; 2008-10). Carlos also founded the Cambridge Symphonic Players, leading performances with some of the best musicians and soloists at the university.
After leaving academia to focus on performance full-time, Carlos conducted orchestras such as The Hallé, the Manchester Camerata, and the London Sinfonietta. Notably, Carlos conducted a series of concerts with the Britten Sinfonia in 2015 that included the UK première of Hans Abrahamsen’s Double Concerto for violin, piano, and strings. As well as conducting all the ensembles of the Royal Northern College of Music, Carlos was associate conductor with the Manchester-based ACM ensemble, with whom he premiered many works by young composers, and the UK première of Amid by Simon Steen-Andersen and Hans Abrahamsen’s monumental Schnee.
With English Touring Opera he conducted performances of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra and Mozart’s Così fan tutte. At the RNCM, while assisting Roger Hamilton Carlos conducted Handel’s Xerxes and Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria from the harpsichord.
Carlos also assisted Andrew Gourlay for the Royal Opera House’s Luca Francesconi’s Quartet (UK premiere), and Roger Hamilton for the Nederlandse Reisopera production of Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice. Other operas Carlos has conducted are Bizet’s Carmen (UK tour), and while in Cambridge Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, Britten’s Noye’s Fludde (in association with three primary schools), Holst’s Savitri, and Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore.
With regards to contemporary opera, Carlos led the première of Ed Hughes’s chamber opera Cocteau in the Underworld at the Grimeborn Festival in London, and then the orchestrated version, retitled as When the Flame Dies, with the New Music Players at the Canterbury Festival. He premiered Tom Smail’s opera Soon at the Tête-à-tête Opera Festival and Kate Whitley’s chamber opera Unknown Position.
Between 2014 and 2022 Carlos served full-time as principal conductor and the music director of the SYDA Foundation (a non-profit organization based in upstate New York) working largely with Indian classical and devotional music, and with musicians from diverse backgrounds (including orchestral, jazz, Indian, and young musicians). In addition to leading live performances and producing many studio recordings, during this time Carlos also traveled to India where he trained groups of young Indian musicians in various forms of Indian music, such as Vedic recitation. Having studied the tabla with Samir Chatterjee, Carlos also enjoys accompanying singers of Indian devotional songs (bhajans and abhangas) on the tabla or mridang, two traditional percussion instruments of India.