Valery Gergiev – new general director of the Bolshoi Theater: biography, career

Valery Gergiev conducts during the concert. Photo: Ekaterina SAMOKHINA

Valery Gergiev has become the new general director of the Bolshoi Theater. He is a prominent representative of the St. Petersburg school of conducting. KP publishes his biography.

Valery Gergiev – new general director of the Bolshoi Theater: biography, career

Valery Gergiev, a student at the Leningrad Conservatory, won the competition. Herbert von Karajan in Berlin and at the All-Union Conducting Competition in Moscow, after which he was invited to the Kirov (now Mariinsky) Theater as assistant to the main director.

His directorial debut at the theater on January 12, 1978 was the opera War and Peace by Sergei Prokofiev.

In 1988, Valery Gergiev was elected musical director of the Mariinsky Theater.

In 1996 he became its artistic director (he took over the direction of the orchestra, opera and ballet). Thanks to the efforts of the maestro, Richard Wagner’s operas returned to the stages of the Mariinsky Theater. This was the first complete performance of the tetralogy on the Russian stage after a hiatus of almost a century and the first in Russia in the original language.

The Mariinsky Theater Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Valery Gergiev has an extensive symphonic repertoire: all symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Mahler, Sibelius, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, works by Berlioz, Bruckner, Rimsky-Korsakov, R. Strauss, Scriabin, Rachmaninov, Stravinsky, Messiaen, Dutilleux, Ustvolskaya, Shchedrin, Kancheli and many other composers.

Valery Gergiev has been appointed general director of the Bolshoi Theater.

Photo: Andrey TSYGANOV

Under the leadership of Valery Gergiev, the Mariinsky Theater became a large-scale theater and concert complex. The Concert Hall and the Second Stage of the Theater (Mariinsky-2) were opened, and a branch appeared in Vladivostok and Vladikavkaz.

Until recently, Valery Gergiev’s international activities were no less active. In 1991, the maestro made his debut at the Bavarian State Opera (Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov), in 1993 at Covent Garden (Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin), in 1994 at the Metropolitan Opera (Verdi’s Otello with Plácido Domingo in the title role). He has worked with the International Peace Orchestra (which he directed since 1997, after the death of its founder, Georg Solti), with the Philharmonic Orchestras of Berlin, Paris, Vienna, New York, Los Angeles, the Chicago Symphony Orchestras, Cleveland , Boston, San Francisco, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (Amsterdam), as well as many other groups. From 1995 to 2008, Valery Gergiev was chief conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra (later he was honorary conductor of this ensemble) and from 2007 to 2015, of the London Symphony Orchestra. From 2015 to 2022, the maestro conducted the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra and, from 2018 to 2022, the Verbier Music Festival Orchestra. From 2013 to 2022, the maestro conducted the US National Youth Orchestra and performed regularly with the youth orchestras of the Schleswig-Holstein Festival, the Verbier Festival, and the Sapporo Pacific Music Festival.

Valery Gergiev (center) at the opening ceremony of the Sochi Olympic Games, 2014.

Photo: Vladimir VELENGURIN

“Gergiev, as a star conductor, which he undoubtedly is, belongs to the category of sorcerers of sound, who have the ability to draw the audience to themselves so that they lose the ground under their feet,” Western critics recently wrote. about the teacher.

“Gergiev has transformed the venerable Mariinsky Theater with its centuries-old traditions into a super-modern company on a global scale, launching into orbit an endless stream of talented artists. The teacher, of course, deserves a place in the ranking of the 100 most influential people in the world,” The Times magazine wrote about him.

Today he is completely focused on working from home in Russia.

Valery Gergiev is the founder of prestigious international festivals, including Stars of the White Nights (1993), Moscow Easter Festival (2002), Gergiev Festival in Rotterdam, etc. Since 2011, he has headed the organizing committee of the International Competition. Tchaikovsky. On his initiative, the All-Russian Choral Society was revived, on the basis of which the Russian Children’s Choir was created, which performed at the closing of the XXII Winter Olympic Games in Sochi.

2018 Gergiev is a member of the Presidential Council for Culture and Art.

Valery Gergiev’s musical and social activities received three State Prizes of the Russian Federation (1993, 1998, 2015), the titles of People’s Artist of the Russian Federation (1996) and Hero of Labor (2013), the Order of the Fatherland Merit II (2023), III (2003) and IV degree (2008), the Order of Alexander Nevsky (2016), the Prize of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation in the field of culture and art (2017 ), high state awards from Armenia, Bulgaria, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, France, Japan…