Mikhail Tatarnikov to Be the Mikhailovsky Theatre’s Musical Director and Principal Conductor

The appointment opens up new creative opportunities for Tatarnikov, who is known as a consummate professional in the musical world, and is hugely popular with audiences.

Since June 2009, Peter Feranec has served as the Mikhailovsky Theatre’s Musical Director and Principal Conductor. The 27 December performance of the opera La Bohème will be his last appearance in this role. The theatre’s management would like to thank Peter Feranec for his creative work and his considerable artistic contribution, and also to express the hope that his collaboration with the theatre will continue in some form, as far as his change in personal circumstances permit.

Owing to the appointment of the new Musical Director, the plans for the current season will be amended.

Vladimir Kekhman, General Director of the Mikhailovsky Theatre, said: “The two and a half seasons that Peter Feranec has spent at the theatre have been both productive and successful. Mikhail Tatarnikov will now become the Mikhailovsky Theatre’s Musical Director and Principal Conductor, and I am sure that he will prove to be a mature and responsible leader. We were looking to appoint a young and gifted Russian musician. Valery Gergiev, under whom Mikhail Tatarnikov has developed as a conductor, has approved his transfer to us, for which I am very grateful to our celebrated maestro”.

Mikhail Tatarnikov graduated from the St. Petersburg Conservatory specializing as both violinist and conductor. He studied in the Faculty of Symphony and Opera Conducting with Professor Alexander Polishchuk. Since 2006 he has worked at the Mariinsky Theatre. The first opera he conducted was a new production of Prokofiev’s L’Amour des Trois Oranges (2007). Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat was performed at the Mariinsky Theatre for the first time under the direction of Mikhail Tatarnikov, who was also entrusted with the premiere of a new production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte. In the four years since his successful debut at the Mariinsky Theatre, Mikhail Tatarnikov has conducted almost all the operas in the current repertoire, including Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and Der Fliegende Holländer, Prokofiev’s Betrothal in a Monastery, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sadko and Berlioz’s Les Troyens. He produced and conducted Janáček’s opera The Makropulos Case. He has also staged Eugene Onegin at the Latvian National Opera in Riga and has conducted Les Contes d’Hoffmann at the Komische Oper Berlin. He was the guest conductor for a production of Dvořák’s Rusalka at the Teatro Regio (Turin, Italy); he has conducted the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra and has worked with the Novosibirsk Symphony Orchestra, the National Philharmonic of Russia, the Gävle Symphony Orchestra (Sweden) and the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra. He regularly appears with both orchestras of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic and with the Russian National Orchestra. Tatarnikov’s engagements include appearances with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, the Jenaer Philharmonie Orchestra, the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra and the RAI Symphony Orchestra in Turin. Next season he is scheduled to conduct at the Bordeaux Opera, La Scala, and the Bavarian State Opera.

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