Conductor Israel Gursky has been making a name for himself both in Europe and in the US. Currently a full-time assistant conductor of the Metropolitan Opera, he has made his professional conducting debut in 2007, leading critically-acclaimed performances of Don Giovanni at the Washington National Opera. Since then, he has guest-conducted with Los Angeles Opera (Le Nozze di Figaro, The Fly), Teatro de Bellas Artes and the Cervantino Festival (Catán's Il Postino), Wolf Trap Opera (Les Contes d'Hoffmann), Opera Maine (La Bohème, Hänsel und Gretel, Roméo et Juliette), Opera Birmingham (Faust, Madama Butterfly, Die Zauberflöte), Manhattan School of Music (Così fan tutte), University of Michigan (Albert Herring), Yale School of Music (Die Zauberflöte) and returned to the Washington National Opera for performances of Tosca, Don Pasquale, Falstaff and Così fan tutte.
Between 2014 and 2017 he was Kapellmeister of Theater Regensburg in Germany, where he has conducted over 120 performances of operas including Rigoletto, Madama Butterfly, Martha, Hans Heiling, Cosi fan tutte, Iphigénie en Tauride and Die Zauberflöte among many others.
Between 2017 and 2019 he has been Kapellmeister and Studienleiter (Head of Music Staff) of Theater Bremen where he conducted performances of Un ballo in maschera, Die Entführung aus dem Serail, L'étoile, Lucia di Lammermoor, Hänsel und Gretel and Die Zauberflöte, in addition to concerts.
A frequent collaborator with Plácido Domingo, he has since 2009 conducted many of Mr. Domingo's concerts throughout the world. Since 2003 he has worked closely with the Operalia Competition as cover-conductor, official accompanist and pre-selection judge.
Maestro Gursky began his association as principal conductor of NYC's Teatro Grattacielo in 2012 with Montemezzi's La Nave, followed by Alfano's Sakùntala, Giordano's Siberia and Fedora, Gnecchi's Cassandra, Zandonai's Il grillo del focolare, Cilea's Gloria and the 20th and 25th Anniversary galas of the company.
Since 2019, Israel Gursky is on the music staff of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, where he has also coached members of the Lindemann Young Artists Development Program. He has been on the coaching faculty of the Salzburg Festival's prestigious Young Singers Program since 2017.
Born in Tel-Aviv, He is a graduate of Manhattan School of Music, Stony Brook University and the Rubin Academy of Music, and has trained at the Tanglewood Music Center, Merola Opera Program and the Verbier Festival. He has studied conducting with Otto-Werner Müller, Kenneth Kiesler and David Gilbert, piano with Arie Vardi and Gilbert Kalish, and accompanying with Thomas Muraco and Dalton Baldwin.