Petros Bakalakos was born in Thessaloniki, Greece. After completing his piano studies there he went on to study the piano and organ at the Royal Academy of Music in London and at the Hochschule für Musik in Stuttgart as a Nicholas Danby Scholar. In Stuttgart he also studied the harpsichord and song accompaniment as a pianist and worked as coach for the department of vocal studies. In 2009 he was in the finals of the International Song Competition “Schubert und die Musik der Moderne” in Graz.

 

After a year at the International Opera Studio in Zurich he worked as a répétiteur for the Flemish Opera in Antwerp and Ghent. As vocal coach, répétiteur and assistant conductor he has worked for opera productions at the Zurich Opera, the Ruhrtriennale, the Theater an der Wien, the Dutch National Opera and the Salzburg Festival among others, alongside conductors including R. Jacobs, T. Currentzis, Ph. Jordan, A. Zedda and R. Chailly.

 

He is increasingly appearing as conductor, having recently directed Offenbach's La Vie Parisienne and Bizet's Don Procopio for the Zurich Chamber Orchestra's Operabox and a production of Dido and Aeneas at the Teatro Arriaga in Bilbao. He is currently working as repertoire and opera role coach at the Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg i. Br. and as a free-lance collaborative pianist, vocal coach and conductor in Switzerland and abroad. He lives with his family in Basel.