Stijn Saveniers (PhD) is a conductor, repertoire coach and artistic researcher, active across a broad spectrum of musical and theatrical practices. His work combines extensive performance experience with in-depth academic inquiry.
Since 2015, he has been affiliated with the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp as a member of the Labo XIX&XX research group. In May 2025, he completed his doctoral project La Grande Bouffe: challenges in the performance of musical comedy, which explored the function of musical humour in comic music theatre. At the Conservatoire, he is also active as a repertoire coach in the vocal department.
Saveniers has built a versatile repertoire as a conductor, spanning opera, operetta, ballet, symphonic and chamber music, oratorio and contemporary creations. He frequently leads music theatre and ballet productions from behind the piano or cello, a practice that allows him to maintain a chambristic rapport with the act of performance itself, notably in collaboration with former colleagues from the HERMESensemble, of which he was a member for nearly two decades.
He is artistic director of Volksopera, an Antwerp-based initiative dedicated to comic music theatre. He also contributes to new critical editions in collaboration with the Centre for Flemish Music Studies.
As of September 2025, he will take up the coordination of the Labo XIX&XX research group, thereby further strengthening his engagement within the field of artistic research.
Photo © Filip Van Roe