Bolshoi Theater General Director Vladimir Urin, who was denounced by the company's previous music director as "unbearable," has announced the appointment of Tugan Sokhiev as the new music director and chief conductor, effective Feb. 1.
It's none too soon, as Vassily Sinaisky resigned last month, within two weeks of the opening of Don Carlo. Before he went, Sinaisky explained that his resignation is "the result of four months of watching and working with Mr. Urin ... and at some point it became not interesting and unbearable." This is just the latest chapter in a series of upheavals at the once stale and stable national institution.
Urin, who was appointed last year after the scandal that rocked the Bolshoi last January when the Bolshoi Ballet artistic director Sergei Filin was injured in an acid attack.
Sokhiev, 36, is a protégé of Valery Gergiev, quickly rising in opera and the symphonic world. He is principal conductor and artistic director of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin (since 2012), and music director of the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse (since 2008). He has guest-conducted the Berlin Philharmonic, La Scala, and the Met.
Tugan Taymourazovitch Sokhiev is an Ossetian — as are Gergiev, writer Gaito Gazdanov, conductor Veronika Dudarova, and ... goalkeeper Vladimir Gabulov — and he began piano studies at age 7, first conducted at age 17, and was educated at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory.
There was only one hiccup in Sokhiev's steadily rising career: appointed music director of the Welsh National Opera a decade ago, before his 26th birthday, he was too young and inexperienced to last long in the position.
Otherwise, his reviews have been outstanding, such as this from Music Web International about Sokhiev's conducting the Kirov at the Met in Eugene Onegin:
In this final evening of the Kirov Opera's distinguished festival stay, conductor Tugan Sokhiev showed that Maestro Gergiev — marvelous as he is — is not the only asset this glorious ensemble has at its disposal. With a sensitively wrought and heavenly well-sung Eugene Onegin, Sokhiev brought the company’s three-week residency to a stirring close.