Valery Gergiev appointed head of Bolshoi Theater

Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin has signed an executive order appointing Valery Gergiev, a world-famous conductor and the artistic director of St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theater, as director general of Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater for a term of five years, Azernews reports, citing TASS.

According to the Russian government’s Telegram channel, the Bolshoi’s previous director, Vladimir Urin, has been dismissed at his own request.

Gergiev was born in Moscow in 1953. He graduated from the Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory and joined the Leningrad S.M. Kirov State Academic Theater of Opera and Ballet (now the State Academic Mariinsky Theater) in 1977. In 1988, he was appointed the theater’s chief conductor as well as artistic director of its opera company.

He gives more than 300 performances in Russia and abroad every year. Often credited with popularizing the Mariinsky Theater’s White Nights Festival worldwide, he also opened the theater’s branches in Vladivostok in the Russian Far East and Vladikavkaz in the North Caucasus.