A conversation with conductor Lidiya Yankovskaya

Lidiya Yankovskaya left her home city of St Petersburg in 1995 to seek a new home with her family in Albany, New York, escaping the rampant antisemitism sweeping the Russian city.

In 2024, she visits Sydney for the first time and marvels at the amazing views from the conductor’s dressing room at the Opera House’s opera theatre.

J-Wire spoke to the maestra about the journey taking a nine-year-old from Albany to the conductor’s podium in the Sydney Opera House.

JW: How bad was the antisemitism in St Petersburg?

LK: After the collapse of the Soviet Union, things were highly problematic. The economy totally collapsed as the government was not functioning properly. When there were major political and economic problems, people tended to blame the largest minority, and at that time, St. Petersburg had a very large Jewish population, and the Russians blamed the Jews for the problems that they were experiencing.

JW: Did the Holocaust affect your family?

LK:  Our family was trapped in the Nazi blockade of Leningrad, as St Petersburg was called then, and my grandfather fought the Nazis during the time of the Holocaust. My great-aunt was in a concentration camp in Poland.

JW: As a child, you played both violin and piano.

LK: I don’t play violin anymore, but I still play the piano. Not as regularly as I should these days, but I do still play. I continued piano throughout my studies and also professionally.

JW: In Albany, you attended a Jewish school. Was the family religious?

LK: The idea was that I should learn what it means to be Jewish. In Russia, it was seen as an ethnicity, and it was entirely an ethnic or racial designation. But not I knew nothing about being Jewish. And so I was sent to Jewish summer camps and to a Jewish day school and to synagogue with a youth group so I was very involved in the Jewish community in various ways.

The older I’ve become, the less connected  I am to Judaism. I would call myself a non-practising Jew who goes to shul on Yom Kippur. But culturally, it has stayed with me, and certainly, it’s a big part of who I am.

JW: Let’s talk about your musical life after immigration.

LK: I’m eternally grateful to my mother because when we came to the United States, one of the first things we bought was a piano for me to continue playing and practising.

And she immediately found me a teacher there so I could have consistency.

I also took up the violin and continued to sing. I had sung in a very prestigious children’s chorus in St. Petersburg and continued to sing in different contexts in Albany. Following Jewish day school, I ended up in a school that had an enormous music program.

All of my piano teachers were also Russian. One of my main teachers in high school grew up in Australia. His family emigrated from Russia at the turn of the 20th century and via China, they went to Australia. He grew up here before moving to the United States so I have this little Australian connection.

JW: What drew you to opera and conducting?

LK: I started conducting because I was already leading music all the time from the piano in other contexts. In my school, the music teacher became sick, and they put me in charge of the class.

A conductor of an orchestra that I played in saw something in me and encouraged me to get on the podium.

We never had student conductors but he said I should really try this. He taught me and gave me time with the orchestra, giving me the opportunity to conduct a performance. It just felt right to me immediately.

I became interested in opera soon after that because it was an opportunity to combine so many different passions of mine. First of all, on the music side it involves singing, and it involves orchestras, but it also involves storytelling, and I’ve always loved theatre. I’ve always loved books. I’ve always loved stories. I’ve wanted to be a storyteller. It also combines other interests other than music.

My undergraduate degree is in philosophy and music. And in opera, you work with various languages, and you have to think about history and sociology, and literature and so many things that are outside of music.

I went to graduate school in Boston at a time when there was a great deal of opera happening there.

When I was still in my early 20s, I got to conduct big productions like Queen of Spades, Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Lakme, all really huge, huge pieces, which was a really enormous important experience.

I gradually built my way up and then eventually became the music director of the Chicago Opera Theatre, where I could really make a mark.

JW: You enjoy Slavic works and you’ve conducted 40 premieres. Do you still find it very fulfilling to conduct the grand operas?

LK: Absolutely. I have four Puccini operas over six months. I love the operatic works of Mozart and Verdi.

I’m very fortunate that I haven’t been just pigeonholed into one thing. The Slavic repertoire and new works are two things that have set me apart from many of my colleagues because I speak Russian and have done a lot of work with singers on Russian language singing. I continue to get opportunities to conduct Russian and other Slavic repertoire.

That amazing repertoire is untapped. It comes from Eastern Europe and is rarely performed anywhere else.

I love the blockbusters of the Verdis and the Puccinis, including Il Trittico, which Sydney audiences can experience now.

JW: Tell us about the Refugee Project.

LK: The project was started about six or seven years ago in the wake of the Syrian refugee crisis in Europe.  The United States did not take a large influx of refugees. The amount of xenophobia rose tremendously in the US during the Middle East conflicts and large groups of refugees were trying to escape.

It was really disappointing to see just how many politicians would make blatantly xenophobic statements, especially in a country that is made up entirely of immigrants or refugees of one sort.

What could I do about this? I’m not a politician. I’m a musician, but what can I do through music and one of the beautiful things about music is that you have so many people from different parts of the world who can come together. It is the most transferable profession.

The initial idea was to just form one concert to raise funds for refugee aids and also to raise awareness around the xenophobic statements and the racism around refugee issues.

The refugee orchestra project focuses on showcasing refugee musicians and composers from various areas, some of them composers. Some of them may be people like Chopin or Irving Berlin, without whom American popular music as we know it would not exist. Berlin came to the United States as a refugee.

JW: You are conducting Puccini’s Il Trittico being performed for the first time since 2007. Did he use motifs from his other works?

LK: In Il tabarro, there is a strong reference to La Boheme. In one scene there is a character who is selling songs in the street and is singing Mimi’s famous aria from La Boheme.

There are some specific quotes or references, and Puccino used styles of music that he hadn’t really explored extensively, including jazz and French music. There are moments in Il Trittico that are more Debussy than Puccini in some ways, and that I find extremely interesting.

Il Trittico was the last thing that Puccini completed. Turindot followed Il Trittico but he never finished it.

Lydia is based in Chicago. Her family has joined her in Sydney…

Lidiya said: “This is my first time in Sydney. A beautiful, beautiful city. And that view from my dressing room!”

Opera Australia presents Il Trittico on Thursday July 11, Saturday July 13, Monday July 15, Wednesday July 17 and Friday July 19

Tickets: https://opera.org.au/productions/il-trittico-sydney/