Gerd Amelung studied harpsichord, clavichord, and basso continuo practice in Weimar and Basel. His work focuses on secular vocal music from 1600 to 1800.
Following productions in Gotha and Brandenburg/Havel, he conducted Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria at the German National Theatre Weimar and Giuseppe Scarlatti’s Amor prigioniero at the Liebhabertheater Schloss Kochberg. In spring 2024, he conducted Agricola’s Achille in Sciro at Theater Altenburg-Gera, a production recorded by Deutschlandfunk Kultur and released on CD in February 2025. He also directed Benda’s melodrama Ariadne auf Naxos in 2024 and 2025 at Schloss Kochberg (staged by Nils Niemann). At the Innsbruck Festival of Early Music 2024, he conducted the youth project youngbaroque with works by Bach, Charpentier, Corelli, and Mozart, returning in summer 2025 in the same role.
At the Semperoper Dresden, he was responsible for chorus preparation for, among others, Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride and Purcell’s Funeral Sentences for Queen Mary. At Theater Heidelberg, he conducted Jommelli’s Fetonte and Vinci’s Didone abbandonata.
From 2016 to 2024, Gerd Amelung was Artistic Director of GÜLDENER HERBST – Festival of Early Music Thuringia. In 2022/23, he acted as interim Artistic Director of the Handel Festival Halle, where he initiated and supervised the artistic reconstruction of Handel’s Titus l’emperéur and the newly conceived melodrama Manon Lescaut with music by Handel and Rameau. Since December 2024, he has been Artistic Director of the Heinrich Schütz Music Festival 2026.
From 2005 to 2018 and again from 2020 to 2023, he taught baroque performance practice for singers at the Franz Liszt University of Music Weimar and has given masterclasses on baroque opera in Germany, Italy, and France. Since 2020, he has been répétiteur at the Cesti Competition in Innsbruck. He is a prizewinner of the Konzertgesellschaft München and a DAAD scholarship recipient.
