24 March sees the ninetieth birthday of Elena Konstantinovna Matusovskaya, Honoured Artist of Russia and one of the most senior Leningrad and St Petersburg accompanists.
A graduate of the Leningrad Conservatoire, in 1957 Elena Matusovskaya began her career at the Maly Opera and Ballet Theatre (today the Mikhailovsky Theatre), and in 1989 she became an accompanist at the Mariinsky Theatre (then still the Kirov). She has participated in productions of Le nozze di Figaro, Les Contes d'Hoffmann, Boris Godunov, Jenůfa, Otello, La Bohème and The Maid of Pskov and many other Mariinsky Theatre productions. In the course of the more than three decades which Elena Matusovskaya has dedicated to the Mariinsky Theatre, her careful advice has always been adhered to by several generations of outstanding singers such as Yevgenia Tselovalnik, Yuri Marusin, Anna Netrebko, Zlata Bulycheva, Yevgeny Akimov and other artists with whom she continues to work today, among them Sergei Skorokhodov, Vladislav Sulimsky, Zhanna Dombrovskaya, Violetta Lukyanenko and Natalia Pavlova to name but a few. All of them remember and recall "dear Elena Konstantinovna" with gratitude, her inner and friendly support and that very warmth and the intelligent intonation which is to be found on each and every occasion in a class with Elena Matusovskaya.
As Elena Konstantinovna Matusovskaya herself once said, she became a musician on taking the advice of her father who was a passionate lover of music himself, and firmly believes she always made the right choice. In her interviews she frequently admits to her love of her profession: "I have worked for more than half a century, and I am never bored when I come to class. I truly love my work, I really love it, and so I consider myself a lucky woman."
The celebratory concert to mark Elena Matusovskaya's birthday, planned for 6 April this year, has been postponed to a later date.
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