When the curtain — adorned with a newly commissioned 70-foot artwork titled “The Things We Know,” by Los Angeles-based artist Enrique Martínez Celaya — rises at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Rihab Chaieb stands seductively at the top of a marble staircase, draped in an intricately patterned black-and-white ball gown, as pairs of flamenco dancers pose, stomp and wave their hands to the orchestral rhythms. She is Carmen: desirable, defiant and driven. Georges Bizet’s “Carmen” has been performed again and again all over the world, but not like this. Bizet’s masterpiece is the first production in LA Opera’s 2026-27 season, and it is the first conducted by LA Opera’s new music director, Domingo Hindoyan. It also happens to be one of his favorites.
“I have many favorites, but one of my favorite operas is what I’m doing now,” said Hindoyan from his office inside Dorothy Chandler Pavilion about 10 days before the first performance of “Carmen,” which opened Oct. 17. “I love the story. I love the musicv — how it’s put together with the drama. ‘Carmen’ is a very well-known opera, which also makes it a bigger challenge, because everyone knows it.”
Hindoyan is taking the baton from James Conlon, who led LA Opera for 20 years. And like another celebrated maestro, Gustavo Dudamel, who just left LA this year for the New York Philharmonic, Hindoyan also got his start playing the violin in El Sistema, the National Network of Youth and Children’s Orchestras of Venezuela.
“I have three main influences,” Hindoyan shared. “First of all, it’s my father, a very accomplished violin player, now retired. Since a very early age, I heard him studying and practicing at home every day. I attended concerts every Sunday or Thursday night.”
The second influence was El Sistema, and the third was his mentor Daniel Barenboim, the former conductor of Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin, where Hindoyan served as first assistant conductor from 2013 to 2016, soaking up valuable insights that he has carried with him to every role since.
“It is very difficult to just choose one thing,” Hindoyan stated about all that he learned from Barenboim. “But mainly the relationships between music and life, or between harmony, melody, expression and analysis — all these that affect what life is. Also, the process of music-making — every time he started from scratch with a big passion and a big commitment. Through the years, even now that I’m not his assistant, things come to my mind from him.”
After receiving his master’s degree in conducting from the Haute école de musique de Genève, Hindoyan bounced around the globe, from Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin to the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra to the Polish National Radio Symphony.
“Since I was playing violin in an orchestra, I was extremely curious of what’s happening around me,” Hindoyan said about his attraction to conducting. “It’s a curiosity of the repertoire, the massive sound of an orchestra and the process of building everything and taking all these scores that exist only on paper and bringing them to life.”
Hindoyan is also a natural leader. He has to be in order to get his musicians to, in his words, “breathe together.” He understands theirs is a relationship built on collaboration and trust; he is not the only knowledgeable one in the room.
“The musicians are equally well-shaped and educated as I am, so we all work together for a special purpose,” he said. “I request things from singers and try to understand them, what they want, what they need, and put it together with what the music needs. That’s the whole idea of being a conductor.”
Arriving in Los Angeles in the wake of Conlon’s departure, Hindoyan is ready for the upcoming season of satire (“Candide”), secrets (“Nabucco”) and a set by David Hockney (“Turandot”). He said the season has “a little bit of my signature on it, but it’s not that I pick whatever I want. There are many factors that are taken into consideration to build a season. It depends on the city, the work we have done before, what are the long-term plans.”
This is not Hindoyan’s first time conducting for LA Opera. He made his debut in November 2024 as a guest for Charles Gounod’s “Roméo et Juliette.” That experience piqued his — and his family’s — interest in LA.
“LA is a very special part of the world,” he shared. “My family loves it. They just want to come as soon as possible.”
His wife, Sonya Yoncheva, an opera singer whom he met in Geneva, and his two children arrived a few days after he settled in. Although she has her own thriving career, the two have worked together in Berlin and Switzerland, where they lived for 20 years, and “LA won’t be an exception,” Hindoyan assured.
One of Hindoyan’s first tasks as music director is to connect with new audiences and bring new people into the house. And not just bring them in for the first time but entice returning patrons.
“I will try my best to give as much emotion and impact on stage so that audiences want to come back a second time,” he said. “And this is only to performances that mark people with emotion. They want to come and see this kind of storytelling where many of the arts come together: voice, orchestra, design, acting. It’s beautiful.”
Hindoyan has lived in a few cities around the world and traveled to even more. Now, the cosmopolite is ready for his next act.
“I have musical homes,” he said. “And LA is my new musical home.”
For more information, visit laopera.org.