Pavel Smelkov graduated from the St Petersburg State Rimsky Korsakov Conservatoire as an opera and symphony conductor (class of Professors Ilya Musin and Mikhail Kukushkin) and as a composer (class of Professor Alexander Mnatsakanyan). In 1999 he founded the Baltika Youth Chamber Orchestra, of which he remains Artistic Director and Conductor to this day.
Pavel Smelkov has worked at the Mariinsky since 2000. He has toured with the theatre to France, Finland, Austria, Germany, Israel and the USA.
Pavel Smelkov’s operatic repertoire at the Mariinsky Theatre includes Idomeneo, rè di Creta, Don Giovanni, Don Carlo, Falstaff, The Turn of the Screw, Prince Igor, Boris Godunov, Sorochintsy Fair, The Demon, Eugene Onegin, Mazepa, The Enchantress, The Queen of Spades, Iolanta, The Legend of the City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevronia, Aleko, The Gambler, Semyon Kotko, War and Peace, The Nose, The Gamblers, The Enchanted Wanderer and The Brothers Karamazov. The conductor’s repertoire also includes the ballets Ondine and The Nutcracker.
The Mariinsky Theatre’s production of The Turn of the Screw, conducted by Pavel Smelkov in March 2007, was awarded Russia’s most prestigious theatre prize, the Golden Mask.
On 25 March 2010 Pavel Smelkov made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera with Dmitry Shostakovich’s opera The Nose. In the 2010–2011 season he continued his collaboration with that theatre, conducting the opera Boris Godunov.
Pavel Smelkov is a senior lecturer at the faculty of solo vocals at the Herzen Russian State Pedagogical University.
He has written two string quartets, a piano concerto, a piano sonata, a sonata for flute and piano and romances among other compositions.
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