Ellen West

Opera Saratoga

Saratoga Springs, NY

“The musicians, who could be seen through the window in the set, were superb; Lidiya Yankovskaya was the excellent conductor.”

–Geraldine Freedman, The Daily Gazette

“A chamber orchestra can be seen playing through the rear window. Lidiya Yankovskaya, music director of Chicago Opera Theater, conducts tenderly, with no stick and plenty of wrist.”
–Leslie Kandell, Classical Voice North America

“In setting Ellen West musically, composer Ricky Ian Gordon exhibits his typical fluency and good taste, creating a score of pretty postmodernism, mixing tonality with pungently transgressive dissonances and nicely apprehensible motivic developments. Conductor Lidiya Yankovskaya does Gordon’s chamber orchestrations proud.”
–Charles Geyer, La Scena Musicale

“The focused, unshowy music embraces the fluid, conversational style of the poem, heightening Ellen’s emotions with song and building the dramatic arc of each episode and of the whole. There are no extraneous musical gestures, and a small ensemble of string quartet, bass and piano preserves the opera’s intimate, extremely personal quality… Lidiya Yankovskaya was the sensitive conductor.”
–Heidi Waleson, Wall Street Journal

“The combination of strings and piano was ideally suited for the intimate nature of the work and the acoustics of The Little Spa Theater. Conductor Lidiya Yankovskaya maintained a perfect balance between the instruments and singers throughout. Born of necessity, the window through which orchestra and conductor could be seen heightened the undercurrent of voyeurism inherent in witnessing a story so personal.”
–Rick Perdian, Seen and Heard International

“Lidiya Yankovskaya firmly (and with monitor-facilitated balance with the stage) led a violin-dominated chamber orchestra.”
–David Shengold, Opera News

“Conductor Lidiya Yankovskaya, Musical Director of Chicago Opera Theater, drew the voices and instruments together into a bold statement on the often-futile treatment of eating disorders.  Even the angst expressed in a Wagnerian opera that used the same narrative libretto style might not have conveyed the emotion that Yankovskaya wrought in the modern opera genre.”

–Ann Boland, Picture this Post