Volker Plangg

Volker Michael Plangg was born on 27 June 1953 in Bludenz in the Austrian state of Vorarlberg, where he attended primary school and grammar school. In 1972 he began studying piano, conducting and composition at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. He continued his training at the Freiburg University of Music, studying composition, piano teaching, coaching and conducting, and completed his studies there around 1980.

Plangg began his career in 1980 as Kapellmeister and répétiteur at the Lüneburg theatre, and also guest conducted at the Alte Oper Frankfurt. He was Kapellmeister at the Pfalztheater Kaiserslautern from 1983 to 1986, worked with the Eutin Festival and the Deutsches Theater Munich, and assisted Peter Schneider at the Nationaltheater Mannheim, where he helped prepare the premiere of Wolfgang Rihm's Die Hamletmaschine. From 1987 to 1989 he led the Pocket Opera in Nuremberg and was guest professor for musical theatre at the Berlin University of the Arts.

In 1990 he worked on Broadway as a rehearsal conductor of The Phantom of the Opera and then became musical director and premiere conductor of the Hamburg production. He was resident guest conductor at Berlin's Theater des Westens from 1992 to 1996, and from 1995 to 2003 chief conductor of the Staatsoperette Dresden, where he led the German language premieres of Aspects of Love and Victor/Victoria. He later worked freelance with the Volkstheater Rostock, the Tyrolean State Theatre, the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe, the Volksoper Vienna, WDR Cologne and the Opera House Halle.

His compositions include children's operas, the opera musical Rasputin, the ballet Snow White, the Mirror and the Prince, the opera Pharao, Hymne for the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden and the musical opera Katharina Kepler, as well as orchestral, chamber and vocal works blending jazz, rock and non European styles.

Plangg lived in Dresden and Berlin. Alongside music he wrote a novel, Der Klangwandler, and worked as an editor for the Gallissas theatre publishing house in Berlin.

Volker Plangg died on 4 November 2026 at the age of 73. His death was reported by the Sächsische Zeitung, which noted that he had shaped the Staatsoperette Dresden for eight years. The cause of death was not reported.

Plangg is remembered for bringing major Broadway and West End musicals to German speaking audiences, above all as the founding musical director of Hamburg's long running Phantom of the Opera, and for his eight years leading the Staatsoperette Dresden. His catalogue of stage, orchestral and chamber works reflects a wide curiosity across genres.