Miller Outdoor Theatre: Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 4

Lidiya Yankovskaya is a fiercely committed advocate for Slavic masterpieces, operatic rarities, and contemporary works on the leading edge of classical music. She has conducted more than 40 world premieres, including 17 operas, and her strength as a visionary collaborator has guided new perspectives on staged and symphonic repertoire from Carmen and Queen of Spades to Price and Prokofiev.

Since her appointment as Elizabeth Morse and Genius Music Director of Chicago Opera Theater in 2017, Lidiya has led the Chicago premieres of Jake Heggie’s Moby-Dick, Rachmaninoff’s Aleko, Joby Talbot’s Everest, Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta, and Adamo’s Becoming Santa Claus, as well as the world premiere of Dan Shore’s Freedom Ride. Her daring performances before and amid the pandemic earned recognition from the Chicago Tribune, which praised her as “the very model of how to survive adversity, and also how to thrive in it,” while naming her 2020 Chicagoan of the Year.

In the 2022-23 Season, Lidiya made a series of major orchestral debuts, including performances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Houston Symphony, Sacramento Philharmonic, Knoxville Symphony, and Richmond Symphony. She also debuted at Santa Fe Opera in a new production of Dvořák’s Rusalka, at Staatsoper Hamburg with Eugene Onegin, and at English National Opera, conducting a new staged production of Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. She led the long-awaited world premieres of Edward Tulane at Minnesota Opera and The Life and Death(s) of Alan Turing at Chicago Opera Theater, where she also conducted the Chicago premiere of Szymanowski’s Król Roger.

Lidiya has recently conducted Carmen at Houston Grand Opera, Don Giovanni at Seattle Opera, Pia de’ Tolomei at Spoleto Festival USA, Der Freischütz at Wolf Trap Opera, and Taking Up Serpents at Washington National Opera and the Glimmerglass Festival. On the concert stage, recent engagements include Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, Omaha Symphony, Rhode Island Philharmonic, and Julia Wolfe’s Anthracite Fields with Bang on a Can All-Stars and The Choir of Trinity Wall Street at Carnegie Hall.