Director walks out on Gennady Rozhdestvensky

The chief director of the Pokrovsky chamber music theatre in Moscow, Mikhail Kislyarov, has resigned after differences with its veteran chief conductor.

Apparently, they could not see eye to eye on Mozart’s Clemenza di Tito.

A Russian source adds: ‘The truth is Mr. Rozhdestvensky ordered to fire Mr. Kislyarov from his position of Principal Director of the theatre where Mr. Rozhdestvensky is Music Director.

Previously, a couple of years ago, Mr. Rozhdestvensky ordered to fire (with no apparent reason) from his position the Principal Conductor of the same theatre, Mr. Agronsky.

As in both cases there were no legal reasons for firing these quite distinguished artists, it was done by eliminating the positions of the Principal Conductor and Principal Director accordingly.

There has been indeed an artistic disagreement between Mr. Kislyarov and the conductor Ignat Solzhenitsyn, who, and not Mr. Rozhdestvensky, is the Music Director of La Clemenza di Tito production which was supposed to be premiered in a month and  now is left without the director.

Pokrovsky Chamber Opera was founded 45 years ago by Boris Pokrovsky, Mr. Kislyarov’s teacher, the most famous Russian stage director of the 20th century. And the theatre has always been considered a ‘director’s opera theatre’ where staging is no less important than musical matters.’