Dmitri Tcherniakov

Dmitri Tcherniakov was born in Moscow and lives in his native city. He completed his studies at the Russian Academy of Theatre Arts in 1993. He is not only the director but also the set designer of his productions, and frequently also their costume designer.

Tcherniakov has received numerous awards. The Golden Mask, Russia’s most important theatre prize, has been bestowed on him four times; he has also received the Italian critics’ prize Franco Abbiati.

Tcherniakov’s career began in Novosibirsk. An early highlight of his work was Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, which the Moscow Bolshoi Theatre presented on acclaimed guest appearances in Paris, London, New York and Tokyo. It was also Tcherniakov to whom the Bolshoi Theatre entrusted Berg’s Wozzeck and, for the reopening of the house, Glinka’s Ruslan and Lyudmila. In 2020, Rimsky-Korsakov’s rarely performed opera Sadko followed in a spectacular production.

Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin marked the beginning of a close artistic collaboration with conductor Daniel Barenboim, followed by further joint productions: Prokofiev’s The Gambler, Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tsar’s Bride and Betrothal in a Monastery, as well as Wagner’s Parsifal and Tristan und Isolde.

For the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Tcherniakov likewise created Tristan und Isolde, as well as Glinka’s A Life for the Tsar; for Deutsche Oper am Rhein, Lyon and London’s ENO, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk; and for the Opéra de Paris, Macbeth and Les Troyens. His Simon Boccanegra also premiered at London’s ENO, while the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence presented Don Giovanni and a much-discussed, newly interpreted Carmen.

Four productions at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich — Khovanshchina, Simon Boccanegra, Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites and Berg/Cerha’s Lulu — deepened his artistic recognition in Germany. Verdi’s La traviata in Milan and Borodin’s Prince Igor at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, which was also seen in Amsterdam, consolidated his international renown.

Among the artistic highlights of his work are Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya in Amsterdam, Verdi’s Il trovatore and Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tale of Tsar Saltan in Brussels, and all his productions to date at Opernhaus Zürich. Twice he opened the seasons there with Leoš Janáček: in 2012 with Jenůfaand in 2019 with The Makropulos Affair; in 2016, Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande received its premiere there.

A project of unusual music-dramaturgical ambition was Tcherniakov’s conceptually connected reinterpretation of two works that had appeared on the same programme at their world premiere in 1892: Tchaikovsky’s one-act opera Iolantaand the ballet The Nutcracker. Rimsky-Korsakov’s rarely performed Snegurochka (The Snow Maiden) at the Opéra de Paris was another of Tcherniakov’s contributions to enriching the Russian operatic repertoire.