Great mediator
Weimar conducting alumnus Vitali Alekseenok becomes chief conductor at Deutsche Oper am Rhein
Once again, the "Weimar Conductors' Forge" is living up to its name: conducting alumnus Vitali Alekseenok will be the new principal conductor at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein Düsseldorf | Duisburg from the 2024/25 season. The 32-year-old native of Belarus was a master's student in the class of Prof. Nicolás Pasquet and Prof. Ekhart Wycik at the University of Music FRANZ LISZT Weimar until 2022.
Since the 2022/23 season he has already acted as Kapellmeister at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, and in the coming season he will become 1st Kapellmeister and Deputy General Music Director (GMD).
"From the 2024/25 season, I will then take on most of the tasks of a GMD position as chief conductor," explains Vitali Alekseenok, who will be directing three productions of his own from this autumn with "Eugene Onegin" by Tchaikovsky, the world premiere of "September Sonata" by Manfred Trojahn and the dance production "Surrogate Cities" by Heiner Goebbels.
"Working at Deutsche Oper am Rhein with its two venues, two first-class orchestras, large ensemble and repertoire of pieces offers me special experiences and great opportunities for development. I feel very comfortable here and am very much looking forward to taking on more responsibility."
His main teacher Prof. Nicolás Pasquet adds, "Vitali is a particularly versatile person and artist. Not only did he show his moral courage during the summer protests in Minsk and in rescuing Ukrainian refugees, but as an artist he is a great mediator. He is a wonderful artist who is experiencing a meteoric rise in his conducting career. Everywhere he is invited to conduct, be it Salzburg, Sicily, Vienna, etc., and everywhere he is met with great appreciation."
Vitali Alekseenok entered the limelight of international attention in 2021 with 1st prize at the Arturo Toscanini Conducting Competition in Parma, where he also received the Audience Award and the prize for the best performance of a Verdi opera, among other prizes.
Since November 2022, Alekseenok has been Kapellmeister at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein Düsseldorf | Duisburg, where he conducts revivals of Turandot, Tosca, Hansel and Gretel and The Magic Flute, as well as the new production Sacre with works by Igor Stravinsky and Richard Strauss.
He also made his debut at Teatro alla Scala in 2022/23 with the world premiere of the opera Il piccolo principe (The Little Prince) and can be seen in concerts at the Beethoven Festival in Bonn, the Rossini Festival in Pesaro, the Ludwigsburg Festival and with Klangforum Wien, among others. In December 2022, Alekseenok was appointed Principal Guest Conductor at the Teatro Massimo Bellini.
In recent seasons, he has conducted the MDR Radio Symphony Orchestra Leipzig, the Orchestra of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra, the Staatskapelle Weimar, the Lucerne Festival Strings, the Toscanini Orchestra in Parma and the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra, among others.
As an opera conductor, Vitali Alekseenok led the first Ukrainian performance of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde at the National Opera of Ukraine in autumn 2021. He has worked as an assistant and conductor at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, the Graz Opera, the Odessa National Opera, the German National Theatre in Weimar and the Varna Opera.
In 2018, he conducted a new production of Mozart's opera Don Giovanni in the Ukrainian military region of Severodonetsk as part of the Music and Dialogue project. Alekseenok is the founder and artistic director of the ensemble paradigme, which performs works from the 20th and 21st centuries to premieres by currently active composers.
After his studies in St. Petersburg (Prof. Alexander Alekseev) and Weimar (Prof. Nicolas Pasquet, Ekhart Wycik, Gunter Kahlert), Alekseenok attended master classes with Bernard Haitink, Fabio Luisi, Jorma Panula and Ricardo Muti, among others. He has also worked with Vladimir Jurowski, Oksana Lyniv, Lothar Zagrosek and Maurizio Barbaccini, among others.
Vitali Alekseenok is active in various pedagogical fields, including conducting numerous youth orchestras in Germany, Italy, Poland and Ukraine and lecturing at the universities of Munich, Berlin and Frankfurt am Main.
He is the author of the book "The White Days of Minsk" (S. Fischer Frankfurt, 2021) and has written articles and essays for the Tagesspiegel, Neue Rundschau Frankfurt and Religion & Gesellschaft Zurich, among others. In June 2021, Alekseenok was appointed artistic director of the KharkivMusicFest in Ukraine, which held numerous concerts in air-raid shelters, subways and hospitals in Kharkiv during the war.
[7 July 2023]