|
|
Conductor
• Prize-winner at the International Antonio Pedrotti Conducting Competition (Italy, 2001)
• Prize-winner at the Dimitri Mitropoulos Conducting Competition (Greece, 2002)
Born in Leningrad. He began his music studies as a violinist at the School of the Leningrad State Conservatoire. He and his family emigrated to the USA in 1989 where he studied for a bachelor’s degree under Josef Gingold at the Indiana University School of Music. He later returned to St Petersburg where he studied at the faculty of opera and symphony conducting of the St Petersburg State Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatoire (class of Professor Ilya Musin and Mariss Jansons). In the summer of 2000 and 2001 he trained at the Aspen Music Festival’s American Academy of Conducting under David Zinman and Jorma Panula.
Mikhail Agrest joined the Mariinsky Theatre in 2001. He conducts the operas a Life for the Tsar, The Snow Maiden, The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevronia, Sadko, Oedipus Rex, Le Rossignol, the Fiery Angel, Lucia di Lammermoor, La bohème, Il trittico, Cleopatra and Così fan tutte and the ballets La Sylphide, Giselle, Le Corsaire, Swan Lake, Don Quixote, The Firebird, Pétrouchka, Le Sacre du printemps, Apollo, Prodigal Son, Jewels, La Valse, The Four Temperaments, Romeo and Juliet, Manon, Cinderella and The Nutcracker.
In July 2003 with the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, Mikhail Agrest made his Metropolitan Opera debut with Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and Maiden Fevronia and his debut at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, with the ballets Le Sacre du printemps and Les Noces.
In 2005 and 2006 he collaborated with London’s Royal Ballet, conducting Romeo and Juliet, Le Sacre du printemps and L’Histoire du soldat.
In 2005 he appeared with Leipzig’s Gewandhaus Orchestra and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. The same year saw debuts with the Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande in Geneva (Switzerland) and the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra (USA).
In October 2006 English National Opera premiered a new production of Janáček’s opera Jenůfa under Mikhail Agrest (production by David Alden).
2007 saw performances with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (Great Britain), Malmö (Sweden), the BBC London Symphony Orchestra and the Philharmonic Orchestras of Helsinki (Finland) and Radio France together with Olga Borodina. in May 2007 he appeared with the National Philharmonic Orchestra of Hungary as well as the orchestras of Irish and Danish Radio.
In 2008, Mikhail Agrest conducted ;performance of Don Giovanni with the Australian Opera and the Rake’s Progress for the Opera de Oviedo, while summer 2009 saw a new production of La traviata by Jonathan Miller for the Glimmerglass Opera. He has also conducted the orchestras of the Komische Oper in Berlin, the Opéra de Lyons and the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples.
|
