Isidor Zak (Isidor Zak) |

Isidor Zak

Soviet conductor, People’s Artist of the USSR (1976), laureate of the Stalin Prize (1948).

On the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of October, a group of Soviet artists were awarded the Orders of Lenin. And among the most prominent musicians of our Motherland, conductor Isidor Zak received this high award. He is one of the most experienced opera conductors in the country. His activity in this field began early: already at the age of twenty, after graduating from the Odessa Conservatory (1925) and the Leningrad Conservatory in the class of N. Malko (1929), he began working in the musical theaters of Vladivostok and Khabarovsk (1929-1931). Then opera lovers in Kuibyshev (1933-1936), Dnepropetrovsk (1936-1937), Gorky (1937-1944), Novosibirsk (1944-1949), Lvov (1949-1952), Kharkov (1951-1952), became acquainted with his art. Alma-Ata (1952-1955); from 1955 to 1968 the conductor headed the Chelyabinsk Opera and Ballet Theater named after M. I. Glinka.

Zack’s creative initiative played an important role in the organization and development of major theaters of the Russian Federation – Novosibirsk and Chelyabinsk. Under his leadership, for the first time on the Soviet stage, productions of the operas The Enchantress by Tchaikovsky, Dalibor and Brandenburgers in the Czech Republic by Smetana were staged. Zak systematically turned to the novelties of Soviet music. In particular, for staging I. Morozov’s ballet Doctor Aibolit, the conductor was awarded the State Prize of the USSR. In 1968 he was appointed chief conductor of the Novosibirsk Opera. Together with the theaters he directed, Zak toured in many cities of the Soviet Union. Then he became a professor at the Novosibirsk Conservatory, where he taught until the end of his life.

Singer Vladimir Galuzin, who worked with him at the beginning of his operatic career, called Zak “a whole epoch in conducting, a titan conductor.”

Literature: I. Ya. Neishtadt. People’s Artist of the USSR Isidor Zak. – Novosibirsk, 1986.