Omer Meir Wellber was born in Be'er Sheva, Israel in 1981, and has now emerged on the international scene as one of the most outstanding young conductors. In recent seasons, he has made successful debuts with a number of orchestras including the RAI National Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and is a regular guest conductor at the Israeli Opera, the Semperoper Dresden and at La Fenice Venice. Since 2009, he has been the music director of the Raanana Symphonette Orchestra, founded in 1991 to help aid the integration of Jewish immigrants in Israel.

 

Following his acclaimed debut at the Glyndebourne Festival in May 2014 the London Philharmonic Orchestra immediately invited Wellber to make his Royal Festival debut with them in April 2015. In the 2014-2015 season, Wellber made his U.S. debut with the Pittsburgh  Symphony Orchestra and debut with the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig, both resulting in immediate re-invitations to both orchestras in the 2015-2016 and 2016-2017 seasons respectively. Debuts in the 2015-2016 season include the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Tonhalle Orchestra in Zurich, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Rundfunk Symphony Orchestra in Berlin, Salzburg Camerata (with whom he will perform at the Vienna Konzerthaus with Hilary Hahn), and U.S. debuts with the Houston and Atlanta Symphony orchestras.

From 2010 to 2014, he held the position of music director at the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia in Valencia where he conducted various symphonic concerts as well as performances of  Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin that has been published on DVD by C Major, Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov,  two works by de Falla – La vida breve and El amor brujo – and Verdi's I due Foscari with Plácido Domingo. In June 2013, he conducted the jubilee performance of Aida with La Fura dels Baus in the Arena di Verona to great acclaim. A DVD of the production was released by BelAir classiques in 2014. His debut at the Semperoper Dresden with Strauss' Daphne lead to a profound relationship with the opera house and the Staatskapelle Dresden — In 2014, Wellber conducted Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos and a concert performance of Guntram and opened a Mozart/Da Ponte trilogy with Così fan tutte, staged by Andreas Kriegenburg. By the Vienna Festival he was entrusted with the direction of Verdi's trilogia popolare in a three-year project, conducting Rigoletto (2011), La Traviata (2012) and Il Trovatore (2013). Besides his engagements at La Scala, the Teatro Massimo in Palermo or the Berliner Staatsoper, he conducted numerous symphony concerts with the Orchestre de Paris, the Filarmonica della Scala, the NDR Radiophilharmonie in Hannover and the hr-Sinfonieorchester in Frankfurt.

Wellber began his musical training at the age of five on the accordion and piano. As he was also interested in composition, he took lessons from Tania Taler from the age of nine. After that he was taught by Michael Wolpe until 2004. He graduated from the Be'er Sheva conservatoire as early as 1999. Since then his works have been performed both in Israel and abroad, and broadcast on the radio. After graduating, Wellber took advantage of a scholarship from the American-Israel Cultural Foundation to continue his studies from 2000 to 2008. He did his B.A. under Eugene Zirlin at the Jerusalem Music Academy and his master's degree in Mendi Rodan's class.

Since 2005, Wellber has regularly appeared at the Israeli Opera in Tel Aviv, where he has conducted, among other works, Verdi's La Traviata, La Forza del Destino, Il Trovatore, Rigoletto and Un Ballo in Maschera, Puccini's Turandot and Madama Butterfly, Ponchielli's La Gioconda, Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amore, Mozart's Così fan tutte and The Magic Flute, Boito's Mefistofele, Gounod's Faust and Janacek's The Cunning Little Vixen. In February 2007, Wellber conducted a gala concert in Beijing with the city's Philharmonic Orchestra. Shortly after that he made his debut with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. This was followed in October 2008 by Verdi's Aida at the Teatro Verdi in Padua, for which he was voted one of the new discoveries of the year by the Italian magazine Classic Voice.

Between 2008 and 2010 he assisted Daniel Barenboim at the Berliner Staatsoper Unter den Linden and at La Scala in Milan. To great public and critical acclaim he conducted Aida when La Scala performed at the Israeli Opera. This was followed by Bizet's Carmen at the Staatsoper Berlin, his first concert at the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia in Valencia, a concert at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Strauss's Salome as stand-in for Seiji Ozawa at the Saito Kinen Festival in Matsumoto, a new production of Strauss' Daphne received with great acclaim at the Semperoper in Dresden, Puccini's Tosca at the Berliner Staatsoper, and symphony concerts in Verona and at La Fenice in Venice.

Wellber commits himself to educational work with young musicians and has become a Good Will Ambassador for the nonprofit organization Save a Child's Heart in 2013. The Israeli-based international organization provides lifesaving cardiac surgery and treatment for children from developing countries and a training program for doctors and nurses from these countries.