Vitali Alekseenok
Vitali Alekseenok studied trombone in Minsk, as well as conducting in St. Petersburg and Weimar, and attended numerous master classes. In 2021, he won first place 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. He is the author of the book The White Days of Minsk (S. Fischer Frankfurt, 2021) and has been artistic director of the KharkivMusicFest in Ukraine since June 2021. Alekseenok fascinates with his pervading musicality and wellrounded interpretations, as well as his open and at the same time profound personality as one of the most exciting talents of the young generation of conductors. Beginning with the 2024/25 season Alekseenok will assume the position of the Chief Conductor at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, where he started as Kapellmeister in Autumn 2022 and has been working as the 1 st Kapellmeister and Deputy GMD closely together with Axel Kober from August 2023. Here he led the new productions of Sacre (works by Igor Stravinsky / Richard Strauss) and Eugene Onegin, the world premiere of Manfred Trojahn's Septembersonate, as well as the ballet production Surrogate Cities by Demis Volpi to music by Heiner Goebbels. He has also conducted revivals and performances of Turandot, Tosca, Hänsel und Gretel, Die Jungfrau von Orleans and Die Zauberflöte. As a guest conductor, in the 2023/24 season Vitali Alekseenok was at the Barbican Centre London, where he conducted the world premiere of King Stakh's Wild Hunt, which was nominated for the Olivier Awards. He also conducted Peer Gynt at the Teatro Massimo Bellini in Catania, where he has been Principal Guest Conductor since
2022. In concerts this season, he can be heard with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra (Dublin), Klangforum Wien, Orchestra e Coro di Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Münchner Kammerorchester and the Sofia Philharmonic, among others. Numerous debuts await him in the 2024/25 season: at the Staatsoper in Hamburg – premiering a ballet by Demis Volpi, and at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, as well as in concerts with the Robert Schumann Philharmonie Chemnitz, Tiroler Symphonieorchester Innsbruck, and with the Sønderjyllands Symfoniorkester. Alekseenok will also return to the Teatro Massimo Bellini with the Trilogia dell’estasi production as well as Mahler’s 3rd Symphony. At the Deutsche Oper am Rhein he will lead the new production of Nabucco and Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, as well as the revivals of Traviata, Cenerentola, The Rhine Gold and Eugene Onegin. In past seasons Vitali Alekseenok has conducted the MDR Symphony Orchestra Leipzig, Orchestra of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, Staatskapelle Weimar, Festival Strings Lucerne, Toscanini Orchestra in Parma and the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra, among others. As assistant and conductor, he has worked at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, Graz Opera, Odessa National Opera and the Varna Opera. In 2021 he conducted the first Ukrainian performance of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde at the National Opera of Ukraine. In 2022/23 Alekseenok gave his debut at the Teatro alla Scala with the world premiere of the opera The Little Prince, along with concerts at the Beethoven Festival in Bonn, Ludwigsburg Festival and the Salzburg Festival.