Mikhail Sinkevich

Mikhail Sinkevich was born in Moscow. In 1987 he graduated from the Middle Special School of Music of the Belorussian State Conservatory and entered the Choral-Conducting Faculty of the Rimsky-Korsakov Leningrad State Conservatory. In 1990 he continued his studies at the Faculty of Opera and Symphony Conducting, which he completed in 1994 (class of Professor Ilya Musin, People’s Artist of Russia).

As a student, Mikhail Sinkevich worked at the Opera and Ballet Theatre of the St Petersburg Conservatory and the Zazerkalye State Children’s Music Theatre. Following his debut with the State Academic Symphony Orchestra of Belarus in 1994, he was invited to join the National Academic Bolshoi Opera and Ballet Theatre of the Republic of Belarus. From 1997 to 1999 he was Principal Conductor of the Belorussian State Academic Musical Theatre. From 2003 to 2006 he was Principal Guest Conductor of the St Petersburg Kamerata symphony orchestra.

In 2000 after being invited by maestro Valery Gergiev, Mikhail Sinkevich became a conductor at the Mariinsky Theatre, where for almost ten years he has also been Assistant Artistic Director of the Opera Company. His repertoire at the Mariinsky Theatre includes the operas The Maid of Pskov, The Tsar’s Bride, The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya, A Life for the Tsar, Ruslan and Lyudmila, Prince Igor, Boris Godunov, Khovanshchina, Eugene Onegin, Mazepa, The Queen of Spades, Iolanta, Sadko, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, Semyon Kotko, Le nozze di Figaro, Die Zauberflöte, Lucia di Lammermoor, Nabucco, Betrothal in a Monastery, Un ballo in maschera, La traviata, Rigoletto, Macbeth, La forza del destino, Don Carlo, Il trovatore, Aida, Madama Butterfly, Turandot, Carmen, Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Der fliegende Holländer, Lohengrin, Il trittico (Il tabarro, Suor Angelica, Gianni Schicchi), Salome, Otello, Pagliacci, Adriana Lecouvreur, The Gambler and Jenůfa, Elisir d’amore as well as almost every classical ballet.

Working with the Mariinsky Academy of Young Opera Singers, he prepared and conducted performances of Bizet’s Les Pêcheurs de perles, Giordano’s Fedora and Siberia, Massenet’s Cendrillon and Cléopâtre, Dargomyzhsky’s Esmeralda, Rachmaninoff’s Francesca da Rimini, Shostakovich’s The Gamblers, Dzerzhinsky’s Grigory Melekhov, Weinberg’s Congratulations!, Alexander Tchaikovsky’s Chess King at the Concert Hall.

Regularly conducts concerts at the Mariinsky Theatre and the Concert Hall together with the theatre’s soloists. Tours with the Mariinsky Opera and Ballet throughout the world, and has appeared at the Metropolitan Opera, the Royal Oper House in Covent Garden, the Festspielhaus (Baden-Baden), in Los Angeles, Washington and at the Salzburg and Melbourne festivals. Collaborates with opera houses in Russia (Bolshoi Theatre and the Novosibirsk, Perm and Kazan Opera Houses) and abroad, in Belarus, Germany, Croatia and other countries.
Since 2013 he has been Principal Conductor of the Musical Theatre of the Republic of Karelia (Petrozavodsk), where as conductor and musical director he staged The Queen of Spades, Iolanta, Cavalleria rusticana, Elisir d’amore, Il barbiere di Siviglia and Die Zauberflöte.

In 2009 Mikhail Sinkevich made his debut at the New National Theatre in Tokyo, conducting the first performance in Japan of Dmitry Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. In 2012 together with the Wagner Stiftung (Germany) as a production-conductor he led the premiere of the opera Der fliegende Holländer in Donetsk – that production was subsequently performed to great acclaim in Kiev, Lviv and Odessa, as well as on tours to Germany.

For many years he collaborated with the National Theatre of Croatia in Zagreb, which hosted premieres of Tchaikovsky’s Mazepa (2010) and Verdi’s Il trovatore (2011), and he also conducted the operas Un ballo in maschera, Carmen, Rigoletto and Jenůfa (2015) among others. Other international appearances by Sinkevich in recent years include a concert performance of Eugene Onegin in Prague and a new production of Nabucco at the Sofia National Opera (2016).

Jury member and conductor of the International Alexandrovskaya Vocalists’ Competition (Minsk, 2012) and the Rimsky-Korsakov International Competition for Young Opera Singers (Tikhvin – St Petersburg, 2016). In September 2017 he conducted the orchestra at the final round of the Elena Obraztsova International Competition of Young Vocalists, and in 2019 conducted the Mariinsky Orchestra at the final round of the XVI International Tchaikovsky Competition (voice category).