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The Ukrainian conductor Oksana Lyniv was getting ready for a efficiency of Puccini’s “Turandot” on the Metropolitan Opera this month when she noticed the information: A Russian drone had hit a constructing in Odesa, not removed from the house of her parents-in-law.
She referred to as her household to make sure they have been protected. But photos of the assault, whose victims included a younger mom and youngsters, lingered in her thoughts. When she performed that evening, she felt the ache of conflict extra acutely, she stated, praying to herself when Liù, a selfless servant, dies within the opera’s ultimate act and the refrain turns hushed.
“In that second, I noticed all of the struggling of the conflict,” she stated. “How do you clarify such unhappiness? How do you clarify who will get to be alive and who has to die?”
Since the invasion, Lyniv, 46, the primary Ukrainian conductor to carry out on the Met, has used her platform to denounce Russia’s authorities. She has additionally got down to promote Ukrainian tradition, championing works by Ukrainian composers and touring Europe with the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, an ensemble that she based in 2016.
The conflict has raised tough questions for artists and cultural establishments. Russian performers have come below strain to talk out towards President Vladimir V. Putin. Ukrainians have confronted questions too, together with whether or not to carry out Russian works or seem alongside Russian artists.
Lyniv, who now lives in Düsseldorf, Germany, has typically felt caught within the center. She protested final month when a competition in Vienna introduced plans to pair her look with a live performance led by the conductor Teodor Currentzis, who has come below scrutiny over his connections to Russia. (The competition canceled his look.)
She has additionally confronted criticism in Ukraine for persevering with to carry out Russian music and work with Russian artists, just like the soprano Elena Pankratova, who’s singing the title position within the Met’s “Turandot,” which Lyniv is conducting by means of April 19.
Lyniv defended her work, saying, “We can’t be towards one another simply due to nationalities” and added that it was essential that nice composers be heard.
“The masterpieces by Tchaikovsky or Stravinsky and Prokofiev — these will not be the property of Putin,” she stated. “We can’t let politicians misuse the music, the artwork. Tchaikovsky could be towards this conflict, I’m positive of it.”
The choreographer Alexei Ratmansky, who grew up in Kyiv and not too long ago created a ballet concerning the conflict, received to know Lyniv after seeing her impassioned posts on social media, the place she has written remembrances of younger victims and posted pictures of bombed-out buildings.
“She has an unshakable inside power,” he stated. “She is aware of what she’s doing, and he or she’s very decided. It’s simply lovely to watch such a full artist and character.”
Lyniv, who skilled within the opera homes of Ukraine and later on the Bavarian State Opera in Munich with Kirill Petrenko, has earned reward for the sensitivity of her conducting.
She has additionally emerged as one thing of a pioneer in a area nonetheless closely dominated by males. In 2021, she led “Der Fliegende Holländer” on the Bayreuth Festival in Germany, changing into the primary girl to conduct there in its 145-year historical past. And in 2022, she took over as music director of the Teatro Comunale in Bologna, Italy, the primary girl to serve in that position.
Lyniv has had a heat reception on the Met, whose leaders have been crucial of the conflict and have labored to advertise Ukrainian artists and tradition. Her portrait now hangs in a gallery alongside a dozen different Ukrainian artists who’ve carried out on the Met, starting with the mezzo-soprano Ina Bourskaya, who made her debut in 1923 in Bizet’s “Carmen.”
Peter Gelb, the Met’s basic manager, stated that Lyniv had introduced vitality and focus to the home’s beloved manufacturing of “Turandot.”
“She’s very clear in what she needs,” he stated. “There’s all the time a hazard for a piece that has been performed so many instances to develop into stale. But these performances really feel recent and alive.”
Born right into a household of musicians in Brody, a metropolis in western Ukraine, Lyniv grew up enjoying piano, flute and violin, and singing in choirs. By the time she was 4, she knew she wished to be a musician.
After conducting a faculty orchestra when she was 16, a teacher instructed her that whereas she was no Arturo Toscanini, the famed maestro, she may have an excellent profession.
She enrolled in conducting research at an academy in Lviv, and was the only real girl within the division. Her household had doubts about her alternative, saying conducting was not an excellent career for girls. Some colleagues warned that her profession could be confined to youth ensembles and choirs.
“But I didn’t hear any orchestra musicians say, ‘We can’t play with you as a result of you’re a girl,’” she stated. “So I believed, OK, I’ll go on, and simply to attempt to suppose in small steps.”
In 2004, when she was 26, she arrived on the worldwide scene when she positioned third on the Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition in Bamberg, Germany. (Gustavo Dudamel, now a celebrity conductor, took first place that 12 months.)
After the competitors, she enrolled on the Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber in Dresden to hone her expertise. Ekkehard Klemm, her teacher there, stated that she got here as a “gemstone that also wanted to be polished.”
“I may see that she had monumental expertise, an irrepressible will and a substantial amount of vitality and creativity,” he stated, including: “She combines her artwork with the challenges of the instances — that’s the biggest treasure of her expertise.”
She took a job as a conductor on the Odesa Opera and gained engagements at European opera homes, together with Graz Opera in Austria, the place she served as chief conductor from 2017 to 2020.
Then got here her Bayreuth debut. “The indisputable fact that I’m a lady,” she instructed Deutsche Welle on the time, “doesn’t make the rating any simpler or more durable.”
The competition invited her again in 2022, in addition to final summer season, when she was joined by Nathalie Stutzmann, who leads the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. The pair had their picture taken in a corridor lined with portraits of conductors who’ve appeared at Bayreuth, smiling in entrance of a sea of male faces.
Lyniv’s success at Bayreuth, Stutzmann stated, “proved not less than that the mentality had modified in a great way.”
“The indisputable fact that we each succeeded,” she added, “means additionally that it’s not so dangerous to ask a lady there.”
At the Met, Lyniv has approached “Turandot” as a scholar, poring over scores, pictures of the 1926 premiere and texts about Puccini.
The soprano Aleksandra Kurzak, who’s singing the position of Liù, stated that whereas it was clear that Lyniv “is related to Ukraine along with her coronary heart and soul,” she was centered on the music.
“You really feel very safe along with her within the pit,” she stated. “She offers a constructive vitality, and her gestures are very exact.”
After her Met debut final month, Lyniv despatched a video of the prolonged applause for “Turandot” to her dad and mom in Ukraine. She visited them final Christmas, in her first journey house for the reason that conflict started. She watched her father conduct carols at a church in Brody, and ate her mom’s candy varenyky, dumplings stuffed with berries, a favourite dish.
On the telephone after that first evening on the Met, she instructed her dad and mom it was her dream to convey them to New York.
“I hope there’s a day when the conflict will finish,” she stated. “I hope life can return to regular.”
Anna Tsybko contributed reporting.
