James Conlon will retire as music director of the Los Angeles Opera at the end of the 2025-26 season, ending a 20-year run that will have spanned half the company’s history.

This March 10, 2020 photo shows Venezuelan conductor Rafael Payare who has been hired as music director of the Orchestre Symphonique de Montral starting with the 2022-23 season. (Gerard Collett via AP)Conductor Rafael Payare was hired Thursday as music director of the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal starting with the 2022-23 season. A Venezuelan who turns 41 on Feb. 23, Payare follows the lengthy tenures of Montreal music directors Kent Nagano (2006-20) and Charles Dutoit (1977–02). Payare has been music director of the San Diego Symphony since 2019-20 and has a contract there through 2025-26. Payare first conducted the Montreal orchestra in September 2018 in Schoenberg’s “Verklaerte Nacht,” Mozart’s Violin Concerto No.