He has collaborated with leading artists, including Aldo Ciccolini,[10] Paul Badura-Skoda, Cyprien Katsaris, Ivo Pogorelić, Lars Vogt, Fazıl Say, Barry Douglas, Martino Tirimo, Dimitris Sgouros, Salvatore Accardo, Vadim Repin, Shlomo Mintz, Diana Tishchenko, Kirill Troussov, Mischa Maisky, Theodore Kerkezos, Paata Burchuladze, June Anderson, Cheryl Studer, Maria Farantouri, and several others.

In December 2007, during the celebration events of the Cultural Year of Greece in China, he took the Orchestra on tour in Beijing, host of the 2008 Olympic Games, and conducted a historical performance at the Forbidden City Concert Hall.

Over his emblematic six-year tenure, and in the middle of the Greek economic debt crisis, Michailidis remarkably managed to increase both his profile and that of the Opera company, achievements which were both nationally and internationally acclaimed.

[13][14][17][18] This notable result, achieved during the Greek economic crisis, has been obtained through specific spending cuts (but without dismissal of personnel) and by a substantial policy of public awareness, which significantly raised general and media interest for Lyric Art and increased both tickets sales and filling rates.

Notably, in 2014, before the move, Michailidis conducted a strikingly poetic live performance of the GNO orchestra on the construction site of the SNFCC, during which 10 tower cranes literally “danced” to the music of Gustav Holst's The Planets, with Renato Zanella's unique choreography.

[2] For his 2018/19 season debut, Michailidis conducted a new production of Bizet's Carmen at the 2018 Erfurt summer's open-air festival, DomStufen-Festspiele (which takes place on the Cathedral Square, seating up to 2,000 spectators).

He also conducted for the following seasons Lehár's Die Lustige Witwe (2019), Rimsky-Korsakov's The Tale of Tsar Saltan (2019), Verdi's Aida (2019), Nabucco (2020, 2022) and Luisa Miller (2022), Wagner's Lohengrin (2020) and Puccini's Manon Lescaut (2021), as well as a series of symphonic works of Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, Mahler, Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Kabalevsky, Berlioz, Massenet, Debussy, Dutilleux, Skalkottas and Theodorakis.

[29][30] On 3 December 2022, Michailidis also conducted the world premiere's creation of Eleni, a contemporary opera based on Nicholas Gage's homonymous best-selling book, written by Australian-Greek composer Nestor Taylor (libretto Fergus Currie) and staged by Theater Erfurt's director Guy Montavon.

For its historical inaugural concert,[33] Michailidis has conducted the Greek Radio Symphony Orchestra ERT in works of Markopoulos, Theodorakis, Rossini, Massenet and Tchaikovsky, all inspired by the Cretan or Mediterranean tradition.

[34] Michailidis pursues his collaborations in Crete with internationally acclaimed artists, including Cyprien Katsaris,[35] Diana Tishchenko, Andonis Foniadakis (choreographer of the contemporary ballet Burning Water) and Maria Farantouri.

[36][37] In November 2021, he produced in collaboration with the Teatro Grattacielo of New York and conducted Mozart's Idomeneo, the first opera performance in full stage and music form ever given in Crete.