Toby Purser’s combination of passion and intellect, structure and freedom, poetry and drama have earned him attention and praise from opera critics including The Times (“such musical energy”), The Telegraph (“galvanising”), and WhatsOnStage (“scintillating precision”). 

Newly appointed as Head of Conducting at London’s Royal College of Music, Toby Purser’s conducting is recognised for its combination of passion and intellect, poetry and drama. In 2019, his operatic collaborations were nominated for an Olivier Award (Best New Opera Production – Britten The Turn of the Screw with ENO/Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre) and an International Opera Award (Best Rediscovered Work – Stanford The Travelling Companion with New Sussex Opera). Recognised as a world leader in the conducting community, at the beginning he the Covid pandemic he launched Conductors in Isolation, an online forum which now has over 1600 members worldwide.

Engagements during 2019 / 2020 included conducting Fidelio for Lyric Opera, Dublin, and La Belle Helène in a co-production between New Sussex Opera and Opera della Luna. Other projects included he launch of his new orchestral ensemble Sinfonia 1, online masterclasses at Aberystwyth MusicFest, and concerts with the East Anglia Chamber Orchestra, the London Concert Orchestra and the Manchester Concert Orchestra. Despite the pandemic, he was able to conduct performances of Don Giovanni at the Eschenbach Palais, Vienna, the world premiere of David Pountney and Alex Woolf’s A Feast in the Time of Plague for Grange Park Opera, concert performances of music by Bartók and Baczewitz at the Royal College of Music and Night Under the Stars, streamed from the stage of English National Opera, in aid of The Passage.

As Musical Director of New Sussex Opera, Toby Purser conducts the recently released CD from the 2018 production of Stanford’s The Travelling Companion, now available on Somm Céleste. He is founding Musical Director of the Vienna Opera Festival and Academy, launched in Summer 2019 and for whom he will conduct Così fan tutte this Summer. His inspirational music-making has prompted guest invitations from English National Opera (where he completed two seasons as ENO Mackerras Conducting Fellow), Grange Park Opera, Opéra National de Paris, St Petersburg Festival Orchestra and many leading British orchestras including the Royal Philharmonic and Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, which he conducted in Jesús León’s debut CD Bel Canto for Opus Arte CD, and Sinfonia Viva.