Oksana Lyniv to Become Music Director of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna

She was the first female conductor to perform in the Wagnerian temple of Bayreuth, and she is now the first woman at the head of an Italian Opera and Symphony Foundation. Oksana Lyniv has been nominated Music Director of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, and her three-year engagement beginning in January 2022 includes at least two operas and two concerts for season.

In Bologna, with the Orchestra del Comunale, Lyniv made her Italian debut last March with a concert held behind closed doors and streamed online from the Sala Bibiena. She then returned in May to conduct a Wagnerian concert, with audience, at the Manzoni Auditorium.

During the 2022 Season the Ukrainian conductor will lead two operas - one of which as a concert performance - and three symphonic concerts. Her first engagement as Music Director will see her standing on the podium of the Manzoni Auditorium on 14 and 15 January for a preview of the new season: the program includes a concert performance of Act 1 of Die Walküre (The Valkyrie) by Richard Wagner, and the tone poem Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration) Op. 24 by Richard Strauss.

Oksana Lyniv will join via a videocall the press conference introducing the 2022 Opera Season of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, scheduled on 20 October 2021 at 12 noon at the Respighi Foyer of the Opera House.

Bologna Monday 11 October 2021

Oksana Lyniv

Among the most interesting conductors of her generation, Oksana Lyniv was born in Brody (Ukraine). Winner of the Opera! Awards 2020 (Germany) and nominated for the International Opera Awards 2020 (UK) in the "Best Conductor" category, this year she was the first woman to stand on the podium of the Bayreuth Festival, which she inaugurated with Der fliegende Holländer. From January 2022, she will be Music Director of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna.

Always active in her country, she first held the position of Music Director of the Lviv National Academy Opera and Ballet Theater, then that of Permanent Guest Conductor of the Leopolis Chamber Symphony Orchestra and Deputy Director of the Odessa National Academic Opera and Ballet Theater. She also founded the LvivMozArt International Festival and the Ukrainian Youth Orchestra in Lviv. In 2004, she caught the attention of the musical world, winning the third prize at the prestigious Gustav Mahler-Dirigentenwettbewerb of the Bamberger Symphoniker. After completing his master's degree at the Musikhochschule in Dresden, for four years she was assistant to Kirill Petrenko at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, where she conducted, among other works, La Clemenza di Tito, La Traviata, Albert Herring, Lucia di Lammermoor, Ariadne auf Naxos and Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. In 2016, she conducted La Traviata at the Opernhaus Graz, becoming its permanent Music director until 2019 and conducting among others works such as Evgenij Onegin, Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci (Oehms Classics), Salome and Oberon and new productions of Tosca, Il Trovatore, Lucia di Lammermoor, Don Carlo and The Passenger. In 2017, she conducted Der fliegende Holländer at the Teatro del Liceu in Barcelona, followed by The Queen of Spades at the Staatsoper Stuttgart, Tchaikovsky's The Maid of Orleans at the Theater an der Wien and the new production of Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Cherubini's Medea and Mozart's Die Zauberflöte at the Staatsoper unter den Linden in Berlin, and Bellini's I Puritani at the Oper Frankfurt. In concert she has recently conducted the Staatskapelle Berlin at the Pierre Boulez Hall, the orchestra of the Opéra de Toulon, the Philharmonie de Luxembourg, the Radio Symphony Orchestra of the ORF at the Musikverein in Vienna, the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks at the Herkulessaal, the Christmas Concert at the WDR and the New Year's Concert with the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker at the Tonhalle Düsseldorf, the Münchener Philharmoniker and the Wiener Symphoniker.

In the spring she made her Italian debut conducting Mozart and Schumann in concert at the Teatro Comunale in Bologna (later returning to the Manzoni Auditorium in Bologna for a Wagnerian concert) and Wagner and Tchaikovsky at the Opera di Roma. She also conducted for the first time at the Ludwigsburg Festival in Bavaria with a program that included Beethoven's Pastorale and Mahler's Lied von der Erde. In June she made her debut at the Opera National de Paris with a Gala Concert and in September on the podium of the Berliner Philharmoniker.