He made his conducting debut in 1984 at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées in Paris with Francesco Cavalli's Ormindo.
In 1991 he was appointed deputy to the Music Director Myung-Whun Chung at the Opéra de la Bastille in Paris, where he made his house debut with Le nozze di Figaro.
In 2008 he led the world premiere of Manfred Trojahn's La Grande Magia with the Staatskapelle Dresden (May 2008).
Thanks to his background as a harpsichordist, he also has considerable experiences conducting historically informed performances of Mozart, Rossini, Cavalli's L'Ormindo), Tritto (Il Convitato di Pietra o Don Giovanni) and Gustave Charpentier's Louise with the Deutsche Oper am Rhein and the Duisburg Philharmonic (October 2008), He appeared as a guest conductor with the Orchestre de Paris, the Strasbourg Philharmonic, the Philharmonisches Orchester Freiburg, the Nürnberger Symphoniker, the Duisburg Philharmonic and the Berlin Konzerthaus Orchestra.
In the near future, Jonathan Darlington will conduct Offenbach's Grande Duchesse Gerolstein at the Dresden Semperoper, Henze's Prinz von Homburg at the Frankfurt Oper and Die Fledermaus at the Staatsoper Hamburg.