In August 2023 Etienne Ferrer made his Italian debut conducting Verdi’s Un Ballo in maschera at the Teatro Mancinelli in Orvieto. He is regularly invited as Assistant Conductor in major opera houses and festivals in Europe, such as the Hungarian State Opera in Budapest, the Grazer Oper, the Festival della Valle d’Itria and the Opéra National du Rhin. With his Strasbourg-based opera ensemble, he conducts fully-staged productions of Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana, Massenet’s Don Quichotte, several works by Offenbach and the two great Viennese operettas : Die Fledermaus and Die Lustige Witwe.
For his commitment to Strasbourg’s musical and operatic life, he was awarded a scholarship for the Bayreuther Festspiele 2024 by the Cercle Richard Wagner de Strasbourg.
Since the 2022/23 season he serves as Music Director of the Chœur de Saint-Guillaume with whom he focuses on symphonic choral music (Poulenc’s Stabat Mater, Haydn’s Schöpfung, Brahms’ Schicksalslied and Gesang der Parzen) and the vocal repertoire of J.-S. Bach, above all the St. John and St. Matthew Passions, sung alternatively each year for Good Friday, following the great tradition initiated by Ernest Munch in Strasbourg at the end of the 19th century.
After completing his cello studies, Etienne Ferrer went on to study conducting at the Haute Ecole des Arts du Rhin in Strasbourg with Theodor Guschlbauer and Miguel Etchegoncelay. He perfected his skills in contemporary repertoire with Jean-Philippe Wurtz, choral conducting with Jean-Philippe Billmann and Baroque music with Benjamin Steens.
He attended masterclasses with Jorma Panula, Alain Altinoglu, Johannes Schlaefli, Aziz Shokhakimov, Antonello Allemandi, David Reiland, Ariane Matiakh and Vittorio Parisi. During the 2023/24 and 2024/25 seasons, he is part of the Fellow Conductor Internship Program at the Opéra national du Rhin on the productions of Lohengrin, Norma, Turandot, Guercoeur and The Tale of the Tsar Saltan.
Deeply involved in music education through orchestral practice, he is Music Director of several youth orchestras in Alsace. He is also guest conductor for the Young Public Department of the Opéra National du Rhin and regularly gives pre-concert lectures for the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg.