Larisa Abisalovna Gergieva (Larisa Gergieva) |

Larisa Gergieva

Larisa Abisalovna Gergieva is the Artistic Director of the Academy of Young Opera Singers of the Mariinsky Theatre, the State Opera and Ballet Theater of the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania (Vladikavkaz), the Digorsk State Drama Theatre.

Larisa Gergieva has long become a major creative personality on the scale of world vocal art. She has outstanding musical and organizational qualities, is one of the best world-famous vocal accompanists, director and jury member of many prestigious international vocal competitions. During her creative life, Larisa Gergieva brought up 96 laureates of All-Union, All-Russian and international competitions. Her repertoire includes more than 100 opera productions, which she has prepared for various theaters around the world.

Over the years of her work at the Mariinsky Theater, Larisa Gergieva, as a responsible accompanist, has staged the following performances on the stage of the theater and the Concert Hall: The Tales of Hoffmann (2000, director Marta Domingo); “Golden Cockerel” (2003); The Stone Guest (semi-stage performance), The Snow Maiden (2004) and Ariadne auf Naxos (2004 and 2011); “Journey to Reims”, “The Tale of Tsar Saltan” (2005); The Magic Flute, Falstaff (2006); “Love for three oranges” (2007); The Barber of Seville (2008 and 2014); “Mermaid”, “Opera about how Ivan Ivanovich quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich”, “Marriage”, “Litigation”, “Shponka and his aunt”, “Carriage”, “May Night” (2009); (2010, concert performance); “The Stationmaster” (2011); “My Fair Lady”, “Don Quixote” (2012); “Eugene Onegin”, “Salambo”, “Sorochinsky Fair”, “The Taming of the Shrew” (2014), “La Traviata”, “Moscow, Cheryomushki”, “Into the Storm”, “Italian in Algeria”, “The Dawns Here are Quiet” (2015 ). In the 2015-2016 season, as musical director at the Mariinsky Theater, she prepared the premieres of the operas Cinderella, The Gadfly, Colas Breugnon, The Quiet Don, Anna, White Nights, Maddalena, Orango, Letter from a Stranger”, “The Stationmaster”, “Daughter of the Regiment”, “Not Only Love”, “Bastienne and Bastienne”, “Giant”, “Yolka”, “Giant Boy”, “Opera about porridge, cat and milk”, Scenes from the life of Nikolenka Irteniev.

At the Academy of Young Opera Singers of the Mariinsky Theatre, talented singers have a unique opportunity to combine intensive training with performances on the renowned Mariinsky Stage. Larisa Gergieva creates conditions for revealing the talent of vocalists. A skillful attitude to the individuality of the artist gives excellent results: graduates of the Academy perform on the best opera stages, taking part in theater tours and performing with their own engagements. Not a single opera premiere of the Mariinsky Theater takes place without the participation of the Academy’s singers.

Larisa Gergieva 32 times became the best accompanist at vocal competitions, including the BBC International Competition (Great Britain), the Tchaikovsky Competition (Moscow), Chaliapin (Kazan), Rimsky-Korsakov (St. Petersburg), Diaghilev (Perm) ) and many others. Performs on famous world stages: Carnegie Hall (New York), La Scala (Milan), Wigmore Hall (London), La Monet (Brussels), Grand Theater (Luxembourg), Grand Theater (Geneva), Gulbenkian- center (Lisbon), the Colon Theater (Buenos Aires), the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, the Great and Small Halls of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic. She has toured Argentina, Austria, Great Britain, France, USA, Canada, Germany, Poland, Italy, Japan, South Korea, China, Finland with the soloists of the theater and the Academy of Young Opera Singers. She has taken part in prestigious music festivals in Verbier (Switzerland), Colmar and Aix-en-Provence (France), Salzburg (Austria), Edinburgh (UK), Chaliapin (Kazan) and many others.

For more than 10 years, Larisa Gergieva has been conducting seminars at the Union of Theater Workers of Russia for responsible accompanists of Russian opera and musical theaters on teaching methods and preparing a singer-actor for entering the stage.

Since 2005 he has been Artistic Director of the State Opera and Ballet Theater of the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania (Vladikavkaz). During this time, the theater staged many performances, including the ballet The Nutcracker, the operas Carmen, Iolanthe, Manon Lescaut, Il trovatore (where Larisa Gergieva acted as a stage director). The event was the staging of Handel’s opera Agrippina and three one-act operas by contemporary Ossetian composers based on the plots of the Alan epic with the participation of soloists of the Academy of Young Opera Singers of the Mariinsky Theatre.

She recorded 23 CDs with eminent singers, including Olga Borodina, Valentina Tsydypova, Galina Gorchakova, Lyudmila Shemchuk, Georgy Zastavny, Hrayr Khanedanyan, Daniil Shtoda.

Larisa Gergieva gives master classes in many countries, conducts the subscription “Larisa Gergieva Presents Soloists of the Academy of Young Opera Singers” at the Mariinsky Theater, heads the Rimsky-Korsakov, Pavel Lisitsian, Elena Obraztsova International Competitions, Opera Without Borders, the All-Russian Vocal Competition named after Nadezhda Obukhova, the International Festival “Visiting Larisa Gergieva” and the festival of solo performances “Art-Solo” (Vladikavkaz).

People’s Artist of Russia (2011). Sister of conductor Valery Gergiev.