BIOGRAPHY

Benjamin Perry Wenzelberg is a conductor, composer, countertenor, and pianist, based between Amsterdam and New York City. He graduated the Dutch National Master in Orchestral Conducting in 2024 with Distinction and Harvard College magna cum laude with Highest Honors, where he studied English and Music, and previously attended Juilliard Pre-College and sang as a child soloist and chorister at the Metropolitan Opera for eight seasons.

In 2024/25, Wenzelberg is a Conductor Fellow with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester in Hamburg, where he participates in a mastercalss with Chief Conductor Alan Gilbert and assists Gilbert and several guest conductors on multiple projects, including Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder and Berg’s Wozzeck. He embarks upon a new two-year relationship with the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century, conducting Haydn’s opera La fedeltà premiata in collaboration with the Dutch National Opera Academy, and conducting, curating, and composing for several further future projects. He also returns to conduct Noord Nederlands Orkest in March 2025, with a program that includes his own orchestral composition, Heroic Dreamscape Fantasy. After both assistant conducting for Matthew Aucoin and covering the countertenor role of Orpheus’ Double in Boston Lyric Opera’s production of Eurydice last season, and then serving as the Faculty Senior Coach on the Aucoin/Peter Sellars production of Music for New Bodies at the Aspen Music Festival in Summer 2024, he assists Aucoin on the Juilliard School’s production of Dialogues des Carmélites in Spring 2025.

In December 2024, the studio recording of Wenzelberg’s wintertime cantata, Any of Those Decembers, is released on PARMA records. The piece was commissioned and world premiered/recorded by Lyric Fest (Philadelphia) with Wenzelberg conducting, and sets the poetry of Jeanne Minahan, who also reads on the record. The album will be available on all major streaming platforms and in hard copy form. He also sings as the countertenor soloist in Handel’s Messiah with the National Chorale at David Geffen Hall in New York City on December 17, 2024.

In Summer 2024, Wenzelberg was the collaborative pianist for Barbara Hannigan in a recital at Casa Menotti in Spoleto (Italy) — in which he also sang and played original works and songs by N. Boulanger and G. Mahler — while assisting Hannigan with the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. The recital was featured and warmly reviewed by Quinte Parallele. He first accompanied Hannigan in concert for Marina Mahler’s 80th birthday, after being selected for the 2023 Mahler Conducting Competition in Bamberg and attracting the attention of the jury with his conducting of the Bamberger Symphoniker.

In previous seasons, Wenzelberg has Guest Conducted with the Tonkünstler-Orchester (Austria), the Boston Pops, Members of Radio Filharmonisch Orkest, Dutch National Opera Academy, Bredeweg Festival Amsterdam (Rossini’s L’occasione fa il ladro), Noord Nederlands Orkest, and Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century, and assistant conducted with the Atlanta Symphony, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Belgian National Orchestra, Phoenix Symphony, Asko Schönberg Ensemble, Netherlands Philharmonic, and Residentie Orkest. He has participated in Masterclasses with the Tanglewood Music Center (Stefan Asbury), Britten-Pears Young Artist Program (Marin Alsop), Gstaad Festival Academy (Jaap van Zweden), and the Grafenegg Festival (Christian Jost and Martyn Brabbins), as well as several in the Netherlands with Lorenzo Viotti, Anja Bihlmaier, Antony Hermus, Jun Märkl, Clark Rundell, Jac van Steen, Ed Spanjaard, and the late Kenneth Montgomery.

Photo: Andy Staples

2022 saw the world premiere of Wenzelberg’s groundbreaking opera NIGHTTOWN (based on James Joyce’s Ulysses) with Lowell House Opera, who commissioned the score and libretto; the piece was critically acclaimed by the Boston Globe and Schmopera, who wrote, “It is almost infuriating that something could be so good.” NIGHTTOWN subsequently won The American Prize in Composition and an ASCAP Morton Gould Award in 2023 — the latter also awarded in 2014 for his first opera, The Sleeping Beauty, a new opera for family audiences, which world premiered with a cast featuring several Metropolitan Opera singers. Also a two-time BMI Composer Award Winner, he has had compositions performed at the Vienna Musikverein and Carnegie Hall, and by the Rochester Philharmonic and Hyogo (Japan) Performing Arts Center Orchestra. At age 16, Wenzelberg won 1st prize as conductor/composer at Grafenegg’s “Ink Still Wet” programme, where he first conducted the Tonkünstler-Orchester Niederösterreich in the premiere of his orchestral composition. He also won the Leonard Bernstein Memorial Conducting Competition, leading to an engagement conducting the Boston Pops at age 18.

A 2021 Metropolitan Opera National Council District Winner, Wenzelberg has also performed as a vocal soloist with/at the New York Philharmonic, New York City Opera, Atlanta Opera, American Bach Soloists, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Dawn Upshaw and Gil Kalish, the Columbus, Portland (ME), and Phoenix Symphonies, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and Carnegie Hall. Recordings include performing the role of Charlie Bucket in Peter Ash’s The Golden Ticket (based on Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), commercially recorded during live performances with Atlanta Opera; singing with tenor group Forte on their debut record; being the singing voice of the lead character in the film (including soundtrack) Hear My Song (formerly Boychoir); and appearing numerous times as a singer and actor on Sesame Street.

Wenzelberg is fluent in Spanish and proficient in German, with knowledge of French, Italian, and Dutch, and is a proud AGMA, SAG/AFTRA, and ASCAP member.

Photo: Andy Staples