Maestro move: Dohnanyi to Yekaterinburg
mainThe Slovak conductor Oliver von Dohnanyi, an offshoot of the German political-musical family, has been named principal conductor of the opera and ballet in Yekaterinburg. Among his first productions will be Weinberg’s The Passenger.
Oliver, 60, is director of the national theatre in Bratislava and has enjoyed an international career.
Yekaterinburg, formerly Sverdlovsk, is Russia’s fourth largest city.
It seems fitting that Oliver Dohnányi would be conducting an opera by a Holocaust survivor in Russia. The original libretto of “The Passenger” by Alexander Medvedev is in Russian. And the Dohnányi family was deeply involved in the German resistance movement against Nazism. The father of the conductor Christoph Dohnányi (who was GMD in Cleveland) was put in a concentration camp and later murdered, as was his uncle, the famous resistance theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Oliver is a distant cousin to Christoph. Christoph’s brother, Klaus, was a mayor of Hamburg.
Please find enclosed a movies from the rehearsal process. The first is in russian with english surtitles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oB3TEYn2v3w
…or watch the second movie, this is only in russian, but with lot of musical and theatrical excerpts:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HF4BT6CiwE
The Ekaterinburg State Opera and Ballet Theatre is full time. They will complete 15 performances in June and 10 more July before pausing for summer vacation. Europe’s big houses typically have about 800 full time employees. Here’s a 5 minutes video about Ekaterinburg’s Othello production. It’s in Russian, but the video itself gives an idea of what large operations these state houses are with singers, chorus, orchestra, dancers, costumers, seamstresses, shoe-makers, set builders, pop managers, truck drivers, administrative staff, and stage hands all with full time jobs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcUsyWo6jBE
He conducted a concertante performance of Verdi’s Don Carlos at the Barbican in the early 90s with my chorus and the LSO, I think. It was noticeable for having been quite unnoticeable.
Dear Stanley,
it was ERNANI in Barbican in concert with Maria Guleghina. Greetings from teatro Colon, Buenos Aires.
Oliver
https://www.facebook.com/TeatroColonOficial/
Thank you Oliver
I knew it was a Verdi opera and my friend Gary Brown – now in the USA, produced it. He was a member of our chorus but in his ‘day time job’ was as an impressario with exquisite taste and choice of artistes.
Regards from Jerusalem
Stanley
Here you can read more about The Passenger – Production: http://passenger.uralopera.ru/
http://uralopera.ru/afisha/show.php?annid=152
http://uralopera.ru/showperson.php?id=550
Dear Maestro Oliver von Dohnanyi,
You are a great conductor. Your recent work with “The Passenger” is especially exemplary. I have studied the YouTube videos and have learned more from them about this important opera and its composer.
It was especially easy to relate to “The Passenger” because my own mother had suffered in a Nazi labour camp when she was a young girl displaced from Kharkiv, Ukraine. Sadly and due to my own ignorance, I didn’t even know the existence of this work or of its composer as well till very recently when I came across this information on Gramophone.
As a musician myself, I would be greatly honoured for an opportunity to work with you if that should ever be possible.
Yaroslav Senyshyn