Alexei Stepanyuk

• Honoured Art Worker of Russia (2006)
• Order of Friendship (2020)

Alexei Stepanyuk was born in Leningrad. In 1983 he graduated from the Rimsky-Korsakov Leningrad State Conservatory (class of Roman Tikhomirov) as a director of musical theatre. Since then he has taught at the conservatory, now as the professor; in May 2020 he was appointed head of the Department of Operatic Preparation.

From 1986 to 1993 he was Principal Stage Director of the Glinka Chelyabinsk State Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre, and from 2003 to 2006 he held the same position at the Novosibirsk State Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre.

Has collaborated with the Mariinsky Theatre since 1993. At the Mariinsky Theatre he has staged the operas Sadko (1993) and The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya by Rimsky-Korsakov (1994), Aida by Verdi (1998), Carmen by Bizet (2005, reworked in 2016), The Enchanted Wanderer by Shchedrin (2008), Il barbiere di Siviglia by Rossini (2009), The Mystery of the Apostle Paul by Nikolai Karetnikov (2010), The Lefthander by Shchedrin (2013), Eugene Onegin (2014) and The Queen of Spades (2015) by Tchaikovsky, A Christmas Tale by Shchedrin (2015), The Idiot by Mieczysław Weinberg (2016) and The Story of Kai and Gerda by Sergei Banevich (2016), the operetta Die Fledermaus by Johann Strauss II (2020; in 2021 at the Republic of North Ossetia–Alania Branch of the Mariinsky Theatre in Vladikavkaz), the opera The Maid of Orleans by Tchaikovsky (2021).

Stage director of productions at the chamber venues of the Mariinsky Theatre including Murych the Cat and Scenes from the Life of Nikolenka Irteniev by Sergei Banevich, Zinaida and The Little Prince by Leonid Klinichev and White Nights by Yuri Butsko.

Runs masterclasses with students of the Mariinsky Academy of Young Opera Singers. Regularly works at theatres throughout Russia and the CIS. The director’s productions are performed at theatres in Novosibirsk, Chelyabinsk, Yekaterinburg, Kazan and Saratov among other cities. In 2019 he staged the opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan by Rimsky-Korsakov at the Theater Erfurt (Germany).

Alexei Stepanyuk’s productions have been nominated for Russia’s Golden Mask National Theatre Award; in 2009 his production of The Enchanted Wanderer received the award in the categories “Best Female Role” and “Best Work by a Composer”.