Arts & Minds
JUF News
Chicago, IL
Hedy Weiss
When Lidiya Yankovskaya was named music director of Chicago Opera Theater (COT) in June of 2017, she also became the only woman to hold such a position at any of the top 50 American opera companies.
This month, she will begin her second season at COT with a series of three programs—all featuring Chicago premieres—that reflect her interest in Russian masterpieces, operatic rarities, and contemporary works. First up will be a double bill of one-acts at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance (Nov. 16 and 18) that will include “Aleko,” a work by Sergei Rachmaninov and Vladimir Nemirovich Danchenko (adapted from a poem by Alexander Pushkin) about a man who abandons Russian society and joins a free-spirited camp of Romani travelers, and “Everest,” a work by Jody Talbot and Gene Scheer inspired by Jon Krakauer’s 1996 best-selling book about a harrowing three-man expedition to Mt. Everest.
Yankovskaya’s own life has been quite a journey, too. Born in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1986, she studied ballet as a tot, but began focusing on music at age five, studying piano and singing in the St. Petersburg Children’s Choir of Radio and Television. At the age of nine (and with practically no knowledge of English), she and her mother immigrated to the U.S., and settled in upstate New York, where she began studying the violin and eventually was encouraged to pursue conducting.
In 1995 [in the wake of the dramatic changes that occurred with the breakup of the Soviet Union], antisemitism was on the rise.
“Being Jewish was not about religion so much as about ethnicity,” said Yankovskaya, who has degrees from Vassar College and Boston University. “I still remember as a small child singing with the children’s chorus in St. Catherine Square and seeing a fascist demonstration. It is different now, and I have even been back with a musical exchange from Harvard that connects Russian and American musicians. And I still admire the comprehensive training and access to music education that continues to exist there.”
Yankovskaya describes her involvement with opera as an “organic process” that began when she worked as a rehearsal pianist and accompanied and coached singers.
“Opera is such a great combination of disciplines,” she said, “and it draws on my interest in languages (German, French, and Italian as well as English and Russian), poetry, history, and theater. Plus, I love collaboration, and opera is the ultimate form for that.”
Yankovskaya will conduct each of COT’s three programs at different venues.
In addition to the November double bill at the Harris, COT will present the world premiere commission of “Freedom Ride” (Feb. 8, 14, and 16, 2020 at the Studebaker Theatre), Dan Shore’s opera, set in the summer of 1951, as the Congress of Racial Equality was recruiting volunteers for its anti-segregation efforts in the Deep South. And as the conductor noted, “There were many Jews among the Freedom Riders.” The season will draw to a close with David T. Little’s “Soldier Songs” (May 14-17 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago), a 90-minute, multi-media, rock-infused solo work based on interviews with veterans of five wars, to be performed by renowned baritone Nathan Gunn.
Not one to forget her immigrant roots, in 2017 Yankovskaya founded the Refugee Orchestra Project, whose mission is “to demonstrate, through music, the vitally important role that refugees from around the globe have played in our country’s culture and society.” It has already been performed in London, Boston, Chicago, and at the United Nations.