Gergiev, Valery

▪ 2003

      When conductor Valery Gergiev and the Kirov Opera appeared at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., in February 2002, it marked the opening of a 10-year collaboration that he had engineered between the two institutions. In its way that collaboration symbolized Gergiev's leadership of the Kirov (which he had assumed in 1988) and the broader role of artistic director of St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Theatre, to which he was named in 1996. During his tenure Gergiev virtually restored the company's artistic reputation and, in the process, took it back to the international stage, where it currently enjoyed the status of one of the world's preeminent opera houses.

      Gergiev was born in Moscow on May 2, 1953. The son of Ossetian parents, he spent much of his youth in the Caucasus. He went on to study conducting with Ilya Musin at the Leningrad Conservatory and at age 23 won the Herbert von Karajan Conductors' Competition in Berlin. He made his debut with the Kirov Opera in 1978, leading a production of Sergey Prokofiev's War and Peace as assistant to Yury Temirkanov, the company's principal conductor. From 1981 to 1985 he was the chief conductor of the Armenian State Orchestra, and during that period he led performances by many of the major orchestras of the former Soviet Union.

      Upon taking the helm of the Kirov in 1988, Gergiev began to establish a reputation for charismatic, intensely personal performances. In 1991 he made his European opera debut conducting Modest Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov with the Bayerische Staatsoper and made his first opera appearance in the U.S. leading the San Francisco Opera's production of War and Peace. From there the honours and international acclaim mounted. In 1993 he was named Conductor of the Year at the Classical Music Awards in London. He was also invited to be a guest conductor with many of the world's leading orchestras, including the London Symphony, Amsterdam's Royal Concertgebouw, the Berlin Philharmonic, Rome's Accademia de Santa Cecilia, and Tokyo's NHK Symphony.

      Known for keeping a demanding work schedule, Gergiev devoted more than 250 days per year to the Mariinsky Theatre, where his control extended even to personally picking the singers in its productions. Over the years he founded the St. Petersburg White Nights Festival (1993) and the Mikkeli International Music Festival in Finland (1994); from 1996 he led the Rotterdam Festival and Israel's Red Sea International Music Festival. In 1997 he was named principal guest conductor at New York's Metropolitan Opera, where he remained an active participant in the company's activities.

      Gergiev's activities and honours continued apace in 2002. At Moscow's Golden Mask Festival, he was named Best Conductor for his version of Wagner's Die Walküre, and the Kirov won three of five awards in the event's opera categories. Gergiev also released compact discs featuring works by Sofia Gubaidulina and Giya Kancheli with violist Yury Bashmet and the Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre and a performance of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition with the Vienna Philharmonic, both of which were endowed with Gergiev's signature intensity and passion.

Harry Sumrall

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