Dmitri Tcherniakov

Dmitri Tcherniakov was born in 1970 in Moscow, where he studied at the Russian Academy of Theatre Arts. He is not only a director, but also creates sets for his productions. Prior to his international career, he staged a number of opera and theatre productions in many Russian theatres, including the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow and the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg. His first high-profile production outside Russia was Boris Godunov at the Berlin State Opera in 2005 under Daniel Barenboim. In 2006 he made an international breakthrough with Eugene Onegin at the Bolshoi Theatre. The production was staged by many other opera houses, and in 2020 it entered the repertory of the Vienna State Opera. In 2009 he staged Wozzeck at the Bolshoi Theatre, and in 2011 he returned to stage Glinka’s Ruslan and Lyudmila for the opening of the Bolshoi’s historic stage after reconstruction.

He has collaborated intensively with Daniel Barenboim, working with him at the Berlin State Opera on Prokofiev’s The Gambler and Betrothal in a Monastery, Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tsar’s Bride and Parsifal and Tristan und Isolde. In 2013 he made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York with Borodin’s Prince Igor and directed La traviata at La Scala, Milan.

Other career highlights have included Musorgsky’s Khovanshchina, Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites, Lulu and Der Freischütz at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich; Il trovatore at La Monnaie in Brussels and the Cologne Opera; Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein and the Opéra national de Lyon; Macbeth, Les Troyens, Iolanta/The Nutcracker and Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Snow Maiden at the Paris Opéra; Simon Boccanegra at the English National Opera; Sadko in Moscow; Der fliegende Holländer at the Bayreuth Festival, Don Giovanni and Carmen at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence; Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh at the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam; Jenůfa, The Makropulos Affair, Pelléas et Mélisande and Die tote Stadt at the Zurich Opera House and The Tale of Tsar Saltan at La Monnaie, the Opéra national de Rhin in Strasbourg and the Teatro Real in Madrid.

His recent projects include Der Ring des Nibelungen at the Berlin State Opera, War and Peace in Munich, Così fan tutte and a double bill of Gluck’s Iphigénie en Aulide and Iphigénie en Tauride in Aix-en-Provence, Janáček’s From the House of the Dead at the Ruhrtriennale, Elektra, Salome and Ariadne auf Naxos at the Hamburg State Opera and Rusalka at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples.