Ekaterina Malaya was born in Perm. Graduated from the Perm State Institute of Arts and Culture (studio of Viktor Ilyev), where she was qualified as a drama theatre director, and from the Rimsky-Korsakov St Petersburg State Conservatory (studio of Stanislav Gaudasinsky), spesialising in musical theatre direction.
During 2006–2012 Ekaterina Malaya was a director at the Perm Tchaikovsky Opera and Ballet Theatre, where she staged Adventures in the Land of Opera by Mark Minkov and Noye’s Fludde by Benjamin Britten, the project Children on the Opera Stage in which 200 school goers of various ages took part in the full-scale opera Prince Igor, concerts adapted for the stage, and closing ceremonies for the international Diaghilev Festival. Ekaterina Malaya staged crowd scenes and assisted Michael Hunt, a British director, in the international production of Fidelio by Ludwig van Beethoven at the Memorial Centre of the History of Political Repressions Perm 36 (popularly known as the Gulag Museum) in 2010.
In St Petersburg she staged Carmen by Georges Bizet at the Hermitage Theatre in 2015 and La celosa de sí misma (Jealous of Herself) by Tirso de Molina at the St Petersburg Conservatory in 2016.
Since 2017 Ekaterina Malaya has been an assistant director at the Mariinsky Theatre. She participated in the creation of productions of the operas Benvenuto Cellini (major revival of the 2007 production) and Der Schauspieldirektor (2017), The Tsar’s Bride and Lucia di Lammermoor (2018), The Snow Maiden (2020), Christmas Eve (new stage version of the 2008 production), The Maid of Orleans and Tannhäuser (2021) as well as of the ballet The Twelve (2022); has also been assisting the director of a production of Sadko.
Ekaterina Malaya staged a New Year concert (2018), a Christmas concert (2019), and a Vienna ball with the Mariinsky Stradivarius Ensemble (2020) as well as the concerts Music of Peace at Times of War (2018), King René’s Daughter (2019), Romances by Tchaikovsky (2020), an Anna Netrebko anniversary concert (2021), the concert Knights of Bel Canto and a stars gala of opera and ballet (2023) among others.
She directed The Tale of Tsar Saltan (Primorsky Stage, 2021), L’italiana in Algeri and Die Zauberflöte (2022), semi-staged versions of Christmas Eve (performances by the Mariinsky Company at Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Concert Hall in 2021 and at Kirov’s Vyatka Philharmonic in 2022) and La Cenerentola (2022), the last of which turned into a full-fledged production, staged by Ekaterina Malaya, in 2024.
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