Since the 2019/20 season, Kirill Petrenko has been chief conductor and artistic director of the Berliner Philharmoniker. He received his training first in Russia, then in Austria. The international music world first became aware of him when he premiered Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung at the Meiningen Theater in 2001, directed by Christine Mielitz and designed by Alfred Hrdlicka, performed on four consecutive days. He conducted the cycle for the second time twelve years later at the Bayreuth Festival. At the same time, Kirill Petrenko took up his post as general music director of Bayerische Staatsoper, his third leading position at an opera house after Meiningen and the Komische Oper Berlin. He also made guest appearances at the world’s top opera houses (from the Wiener Staatsoper, Covent Garden in London and the Opéra National in Paris to the Metropolitan Opera in New York) as well as with the great international symphony orchestras – in Vienna, Munich, Dresden, Paris, Amsterdam, London, Rome, Chicago, Cleveland and Israel. He made his debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker in 2006. Kirill Petrenko also appears with the Berliner Philharmoniker outside of Berlin – on tour and of course in the Digital Concert Hall. Selected performances are also available as recordings; most recently released was an edition with symphonic works by Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Franz Schmidt and Rudi Stephan.
Baritone Vladislav Sulimsky is one of the leading singers in his field, performing in the Russian repertoire as well as numerous Verdi roles worldwide. After winning the Rimsky-Korsakov International Competition in St. Petersburg in 2002, he became an ensemble member at the Mariinsky Theatre there, where he has since returned frequently as a guest, singing the title roles in Eugene Onegin, Simon Boccanegra, Macbeth, Rigoletto and Gianni Schicchi, as well as the Marquis of Posa in Don Carlo, among others. His repertoire also includes Count Tomski (The Queen of Spades), Alberich (Das Rheingold), Lord Enrico Ashton (Lucia di Lammermoor), Il Conte di Luna (Il trovatore), Renato (Un ballo in maschera) and Iago (Otello). Engagements have also taken him to the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, Staatsoper Stuttgart, the Theater an der Wien, Theater Basel, the Royal Opera House Stockholm and the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, as well as to the Edinburgh International Festival and the Salzburg Festival, where he made his debut in 2018 in a new production of The Queen of Spades under the baton of Mariss Jansons. In 2014, he sang the role of the Marquis of Posa (Don Carlo) at the Baden-Baden Festival. In 2009, he was nominated for a Grammy Award for his recording of Shostakovich’s The Nose. He has already appeared in the title role in Mazeppa at the Ópera de Oviedo and the Mariinsky Theatre.
Soprano Olga Peretyatko began singing in the children’s choir of the Mariinsky Theatre in her home town of St. Petersburg. After training as a choral conductor, she studied singing at the Hanns Eisler School of Music Berlin and was subsequently a member of Hamburg State Opera’s opera studio and the academy of the Aix-en-Provence Festival. Success at Plácido Domingo’s Operalia Competition in 2007 marked the start of her international career. Since then, she has been a regular guest at major opera houses, including the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Vienna State Opera, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in London, the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow and the Metropolitan Opera in New York, as well as the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro and the Salzburg Festival. She has worked with major artists of our time, such as the conductors Zubin Mehta, Valery Gergiev, Yury Temirkanov, Alberto Zedda and Daniel Barenboim, as well as the directors Dmitri Tcherniakov and Robert Lepage. Her repertoire includes roles such as Donna Anna (Don Giovanni), Adina (L’elisir d’amore), the title roles in Lucia di Lammermoor and Anna Bolena, Gilda (Rigoletto), Violetta Valéry (La traviata), Desdemona (Otello), Olympia (Les contes d’Hoffmann), Zerbinetta (Ariadne auf Naxos) and Marfa (The Tsar's Bride).
