In just a few years, Argentine conductor, harpsichordist, and composer Leonardo García-Alarcón has become an essential figure, in demand by the greatest musical and operatic institutions, from the Opéra de Paris to the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires and the Grand-Théâtre in Geneva, and has even been awarded the ICMA 2025 prize for “Artist of the Year”.
After studying piano in Argentina, Leonardo García-Alarcón moved to Europe in 1997 and joined the Geneva Conservatory in the class of harpsichordist Christiane Jaccottet. It is under the guidance of Gabriel Garrido that he begins his career as a baroque musician. In 2005, he created his ensemble Cappella Mediterranea to explore Italian, Spanish, and South American baroque music, a repertoire that has since expanded considerably. In residence at the Ambronay Festival, he had his first successes, notably with the rediscovery in 2010 of an oratorio by Michelangelo Falvetti: Il Diluvio universale. That same year, he took over the direction of the Chamber Choir of Namur, recognized as one of the best baroque choral groups today, and in 2014, he founded the Millennium Orchestra, with which he devotes himself mainly to the works of Handel.
We also owe this conductor the rediscovery of many operas by Cavalli such as Eliogabalo, in 2016 at the Paris Opera, directed by Thomas Jolly, Il Giasone in Geneva (directed by Serena Sinigaglia, 2017) and Erismena (directed by Jean Bellorini) at the 2017 Aix-en-Provence Festival. In 2017, he was Artist-in-Residence at the Dijon Opera, and he conducted El Prometeo by Antonio Draghi in 2018 (directed by Gustavo Tambascio and Laurent Delvert), for which he rewrote the music of the missing 3rd act, La Finta Pazza by Francesco Sacrati in 2019 (directed by Jean-Yves Ruf), and at the end of 2020, Il Palazzo Incantato by Luigi Rossi (directed by Fabrice Murgia).
For the 350th anniversary of the Paris Opera in 2019, he directed the triumphant production of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Indes Galantes, directed by Clément Cogitore and choreographed by Bintou Dembélé.
In 2022, he directed a new production of Lully’s famous Atys, directed by Angelin Preljocaj in Geneva and Versailles, an returned to the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence in July with the success of Monteverdi’s Coronation of Poppea, directed by Ted Huffman. That same year, a new chapter in his career opened with the premiere of his oratorio Pasión Argentina, his first major contemporary composition, which he conducted at Ambronay, Geneva, Namur, and Saint-Denis. The last few years have been marked by major international successes, including a Monteverdi program, The 7 Deadly Sins, at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires and the Berlin Philharmonic in November 2023, as well as new collaborations with choreographers: W. A.Mozart’s Idomeneo, re di Creta in February 2024 at the Grand Théâtre de Genève, directed and choreographed by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, and J. S. Bach’s St John Passion choreographed by Sasha Waltz, performed in 2024 at the Salzburg Easter Festival, the Opéra de Dijon, and the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. In July, Leonardo García-Alarcón is invited once again to conduct a Monteverdi opera at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence: Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria directed by Pierre Audi.
In 2025, he reunited with Bintou Dembélé for the international tour of the concert-choreography indes galantes, de la voix des âmes, scheduled for Paris, Madrid, Lyon, Bordeaux, The Grange Festival (UK), and São Paulo.
As a conductor and harpsichordist, he is invited to festivals and concert halls all over the world. He is a regular guest of Les Violons du Roy in Canada, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, and the Gulbenkian Orchestra. In December 2024, he was invited to Brazil to conduct the São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra and Choir in Bach’s Mass in B minor, receiving the APCA’s 2024 “Best Symphony Concert” award. He thus divides his time between France, Belgium, his native South America, and Switzerland, where he has obtained Swiss nationality. Attaching great importance to transmission, he has been professor of the Maestro al cembalo class at Geneva’s Haute École de Musique since 2002.
In 2020, Leonardo García-Alarcón took over the direction of La Cité Bleue, a performance hall with more than 301 seats that opened in 2024.
His prolific discography is unanimously acclaimed by the critics. In 2024, he released Amore Siciliano(Alpha Classics)—a “little Tosca” that he has imagined, based on popular and learned music from 17th- and 18th-century Italy—and in 2025, La Jérusalem délivrée by Philippe d’Orléans and Atys by Jean-Baptiste Lully (Château de Versailles Spectacles).
Leonardo García-Alarcón is a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters.