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Lidiya Yankovskaya - Profile picture
© Todd Rosenberg

Conductor

Lidiya Yankovskaya

Music Director of Chicago Opera Theatre

"Under the baton of Yankovskaya, Tchaikovsky’s score became transcendent. She lovingly guided the singers and orchestra through every ebb and flow of the music, shifting from tenderness to passion." - Opera Wire

Represented by

Pawel Marciniak
pawel@tact4art.com
+34 685204856

Alexandra Lyukina
alexandra@tact4art.com

Representation

Europe


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Upcoming Past
Mar 2023
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15:00

Peter Rothstein, Stage Director

Apr 2023
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Isabella Bywater, Stage Director

Apr 2023
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16:00

Isabella Bywater, Stage Director

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Mar 2023
23.
19:30

19:30

Peter Rothstein, Stage Director

Feb 2023
25.
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19:00

Adolf Dresen, Stage Director

Feb 2023
22.
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19:00

Adolf Dresen, Stage Director

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Biography Highlights

 
 

Recent & Upcoming:

Symphony of Sorrowful Songs at English National Opera, Eugene Onegin at Staatsoper Hamburg.  Carmen at Houston Grand Opera, Don Giovanni at Seattle Opera, Le Nozze di Figaro at Dallas Opera, Edward Tulane at Minnesota Opera, Don Giovanni at the Glimmerglass Festival New York, Jenufa at Vlaamse Opera* and Teatro de la Maestranza in Seville, Taking up Serpents and Kashchey the Immortal at Chicago Opera Theater, debuts at Staatsoper Hamburg and English National Opera. Concerts with Chicago Symphony Orchestra, LA Philharmonic, Knoxville Symphony, Richmond Symphony, Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, Pasadena Symphony Orchestra and Elgin Symphony Orchestra.

 
 

Past Engagements:

World premiere of Taking Up Serpents at Washington National Opera, Iolanta, Moby Dick at Chicago Opera Theater, Shining Brow at Arizona Opera, Aleko/Everest and Freedom Ride at Chicago Opera Theatre, Pique Dame, Lakmé and A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Lowell House Opera, Gluck’s Le Cadi Dupé at New York Lyric Opera, Glass’s The Juniper Tree at Wolftrap Opera.
Concerts with Nashville Symphony Orchestra, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Stamford Symphony, Chicago Philharmonic, Symphony New Hampshire, Hawai Symphony Orchestra and as assistant conductor to Lorin Maazel at the Castleton Festival.

 
 

Portraits

Lidiya Yankovskaya, Conductor
© Todd Rosenberg
 

Reviews & Press

 
 

Houston Grand Opera - Bizet - Carmen

Houston Grand Opera’s revival conveys the iconic tale’s drama and passion more powerfully to the ear than the eye. The Houston Grand Opera Orchestra, led by Lydia Yankovskaya, helped pull the focus back toward Bizet. The orchestra brought out the zest and slinkiness of the dances, the smoothness of the lyrical flights, and the flashiness of the choral scenes—with the HGO Chorus adding its own crispness and spirit.
 

- Stephen Brown , Texas Classical Review

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Meanwhile in the pit, making her HGO debut, maestro Lidiya Yankovskaya, a fierce advocate of contemporary opera, keeps Bizet's spicy paella on full boil. The “entr'actes” are especially tasty.
 

- D. L. Groover , Houston Press

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Bizet’s music is simply intoxicating, encompassing vibrant marches, expansive chorus scenes, mysterious interludes, and pulse-quickening dances like act two’s frenetic opening number. Guest conductor Lidiya Yankovskaya, rising-star music director of Chicago Opera Theater, leads the HGO orchestra with elegance and panache.
 

- Chris Gray , Houston Chronicle

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Chicago Opera Theater - Tchaikovsky - Iolanta

Yankovskaya…led a flexible and richly idiomatic account of this score. She showed clear sympathy with her compatriot’s music—keeping the music flowing through the unbroken 90 minutes, balancing deftly to bring out Tchaikovsky’s woodwind accents, and building lyric climaxes to resplendent payoffs.
 

- Lawrence A. Johnson , Chicago Classical Review

Maestra Yankovskaya’s debut in the pit was promising and gratifying. She brought out all the pathos and grandness in the lush score, without ever overpowering the singers, quite an accomplishment in an intimate theater with such an exposed orchestra pit.
 

- William and Margaret Swain , Buzz Center Stage

Under the baton of Lidiya Yankovskaya, Tchaikovsky’s score became transcendent. With the thorough preparation of the score and empathy with the composer (both having Russian roots and then Western influences), she lovingly guided the singers and orchestra through every ebb and flow of the music, shifting from tenderness to passion, while keeping the pace of the opera moving ahead.
 

- Marjorie M. Rusche , Opera Wire

Washington National Opera - Taking Up Serpents

Russian conductor Lidiya Yankovskaya made a strong WNO debut at the podium, skillfully bringing together the disparate sounds in the pit.
 

- Charles T. Downey , Washington Classical Review

The most interesting parts were Sankaram’s atmospheric orchestrations, brought out by Lidiya Yankovskaya in the pit.
 

- Anne Midgette , The Washington Post

Conductor Lidiya Yankovskaya ably shaped the score: Its spare orchestration is built on string drones and slithering glissandos and colored with punchy special effects, such as the whirly tubes that make a soft, creepy hooting sound, associated with Kayla’s memories, and the glockenspiel that plays as her father brands her as a sinful daughter of Eve and that later accompanies her triumphant assertion, ‘I am the light.
 

- Heidi Waleson , Wall Street Journal

Chicago Opera Theater - Moby Dick

But the ultimate star here was the production itself, a tour de force for Chicago Opera Theater with many moving parts. Conductor and COT music director Lidiya Yankovskaya brought forth brilliantly colored accompaniment from the orchestra, where the most exciting musical action takes place. The chorus, too, proved resplendent, onstage and off.
 

- Howard Reich

…An ideal cast who can act their roles with impressive style, as well as sing them with authority and exemplary diction. Lidiya Yankovskaya, COT’s young and exceptionally talented music director, elicits all the feverish beauty of the score from her superb orchestra, and from the male chorus that is more than three dozen strong.
 

- Hedy Weiss , WTTW News

By any measure, Chicago Opera Theater's staging of Jake Heggie's “Moby-Dick” is a defining success in the history of the company... Perhaps most memorable is a gentle, affecting meditation on the sea as night slowly changes to morning. This section and the rest of the score are handsomely realized by the Chicago Opera Theater’s pit orchestra, masterfully led by music director Lidiya Yankovskaya, who never allows the momentum to flag.
 

- Kyle MacMillan , Chicago Sun-Times

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