Richard Farnes
British musician
Richard Farnes (born 1964) is a British conductor, and was Music Director of Opera North from 2004 to 2016.
Education
Farnes was a chorister at King's College, Cambridge before entering Eton College as a music scholar in 1977. He returned to King's as organ scholar in 1983 and subsequently studied at the Royal Academy of Music, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the National Opera Studio.
Later career
During his professional career, he has conducted operas at the Royal Opera House, English National Opera, Scottish Opera, English Touring Opera, Glyndebourne Festival Opera and Glyndebourne on Tour, among other companies. He has also conducted the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.
Before joining Opera North in 2004, Farnes had conducted The Secret Marriage, The Marriage of Figaro, Joan of Arc, La Traviata, Eugene Onegin, Gloriana and Tosca for the company, as well as the world première of The Nightingale's to Blame by Simon Holt. The operas he has conducted since becoming Music Director include La rondine, Salome, Falstaff, Macbeth, Katya Kabanova, the complete ring cycle and the award-winning Peter Grimes.
He relinquished his post with Opera North following the 2015-16 season.
“Richard Farnes” enters the record as british musician. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Richard, Farnes and British can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7325616. VIAF identifies the subject as 26109663. The Library of Congress control number is n87107022. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1964, 2004, 2016 and 1977.
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This entry incorporates text from “Richard Farnes” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.