Gleb Filshtinsky

• Honoured Art Worker of Russia (2022)

Gleb Filshtinsky was born in Leningrad in 1970. In 1997 he graduated from St Petersburg State Theatre Arts Academy, having specialised in “theatre and decorative art”.

He learned about various theatre professions (acting, stage technician, lighting technician and lighting designer) at the Leningrad/St Petersburg Theatre of Youth Creativity (1981–1997), where in 1990 he worked on his first production as a lighting designer (Fahrenheit 451). Over the years he has been principal lighting designer at the Theatre of Youth Creativity, Larisa Malevannaya’s Studio Theatre, the Bryantsev Young Spectators’ Theatre, the Theatre on Liteiny, the Tovstonogov Bolshoi Drama Theatre and the Interstudio International Workshop of Synthetic Theatre. In 1996 together with lighting designer Yevgeny Ganzburg he established the theatre workshop “Lighting for Theatre”. Since 2007 he has been Principal Lighting Designer of the Maly Drama Theatre – Theatre of Europe.

For thirty years of creative activity he prepared more than four hundred dramatic and musical productions and was an art director and designer of many museum projects.

Has worked on designing productions at the Bolshoi Theatre of Russia, the Alexandrinsky Theatre, the Mikhailovsky Theatre, the Baltic House Theatre-Festival, the Zazerkalye theatre, the Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet Theatre, the Moscow Operetta Theatre, the Boris Eifman Ballet Theatre, the Moscow Young Spectators’ Theatre, the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Music Theatre, the Moscow Art Academic Theatre of A.P. Chekhov, the Akimov Comedy Theatre, the Et Cetera theatre directed by Alexander Kalyagin and the Moscow Sovremennik Theatre among others. Has created the lighting and stage designs for several musicals (Nord-Ost, Monte Cristo, An Ordinary Miracle, Count Orlov, Scarlet Sails and Anna Karenina) and the lighting for many programme shows and productions including celebrations of the tercentenary of St Petersburg and the annual Scarlet Sails festivities on the River Neva delta.

At the Mariinsky Theatre he has worked on productions of Semyon Kotko (1999), The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya (2001), Otello (2001, 2007, 2013), Boris Godunov, Cinderella, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung (2002), Das Rheingold and Die Walküre (2003), The Nose, A Life for the Tsar and The Snow Maiden (2004), Carmen and Tristan und Isolde (2005), The Golden Age (2006), The Gambler, Jenůfa and Silenzio. Diana Vishneva (2007), Christmas Eve (2008), Benvenuto Cellini (2021), Die Zauberflöte (2022).

Regular collaborator with the directors Dmitri Tcherniakov and Alvis Hermanis.

Collaborates with the Opéra national de Paris, the Schaubühne (Berlin), the Teatro Real (Madrid), English National Opera (London), the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie (Brussels), the Burgtheater (Vienna), the Bayerische Staatsoper (Munich), the Teatro alla Scala (Milan), the Metropolitan Opera (New York), the Vienna State Opera, the Staatsoper Hamburg, the Opéra de Lyon, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin, the Deutsche Oper am Rhein (Düsseldorf – Duisburg), the Dutch National Opera (Amsterdam), the Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg, the Opernhaus Zürich, the Gesher Theatre (Tel Aviv) and the Latvian National Opera (Riga) in addition to the Salzburg Festival, the Bayreuth Festival and the Aix-en-Provence Festival.

Actively involved in stage design and multimedia stage directing for high-tech shows. Founder (2008) and Artistic Director of the studio “Show Consulting”, which specialises in the artistic and technological design of multimedia shows and in the creation of museum and exhibition displays. In 2012 the school “Show Consulting” was opened at the studio.

Concept creator, Art Director and designer of the historical and cultural project The Court Entertainments (2014), the museum performance House of Playing Cards (2018) and the multimedia performance Peter the First. Man-History (2022) in Peterhof, the multimedia projects The Birth of Russian Opera. 1755 (2015) and Oranienbaum Through the Ages (2016) in Oranienbaum, the Tin Soldier Museum (2018) in St Petersburg.

Member of the All-Russian Association of Lighting Designers and the Union of Theatre Workers of the Russian Federation.

Has participated in the Prague Quadrennial. Recipient of Russia’s Golden Mask Theatre National Award (Eugene Onegin (2008) and Wozzeck (2011) at the Bolshoi Theatre of Russia, as well as the special prize of the musical theatre jury for the production The Rake’s Progress (2004, also Bolshoi Theatre)), the Golden Sofit, St Petersburg’s most prestigious theatre prize (Boris Eifman’s ballet Molière Passion, or The Mask of Don Juan (2021)), Latvia’s main national theatre prize Spēlmaņu nakts (“Players’ Night”) (Thérèse Raquin (1996) at the Dailes Theatre (Riga), The Queen of Spades (2005) and La traviata (2007) at the Latvian National Opera), the Prize of the St Petersburg Branch of the Union of Theatre Workers of the Russian Federation (Kashtanka (“Little Chestnut”), Theatre on Liteiny, 1997), the Teatral St Petersburg Audience Society Award (Lost in the Stars at the Theatre on Liteiny and Phèdre at the Bolshoi Drama Theatre, 2000), a prize of the Estonian Theatre Festival Draama in Tartu (Fathers and Sons, Tallinn City Theatre, 2003) and the All-Russian Professional Award Facets of the Theatre of the Masses (2015).
Information for January 2023