Gintautas Kevisas took up the management of the Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theatre in July 2002. Having studied the piano at the Lithuanian Academy of Music with Prof. Olga Steinbergaite and the Gnesins Pedagogical Music Institute in Moscow with J. Liberman, he began his musical career as a concert pianist. As a founder and artistic director of the philharmonic chamber ensemble, he toured extensively to Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Estonia, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Slovenia, Sweden, and elsewhere.
He was general director of the Lithuanian National Philharmonic Society from 1988 to 2000, and Minister of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania from November 2000 to July 2001. He has been director of the "Old and New Monte Carlo" concert agency since 1993. He is also active as a consultant to various international festivals and manager of various international art projects. He is the founder and artistic director of the Vilnius Festival.
His work as an international impresario has resulted thus far in over 80 collaborations with Sir Yehudi Menuhin, Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra and Kaunas State Choir in South America (Colon Theatre, Buenos Aires), South Africa, Egypt, and Europe. He also organized tours of the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra and Kaunas State Choir to the world's most prestigious concert halls and festivals with participation of Mstislav Rostropovich, Krzysztof Penderecki, Jessye Norman, Maurice Andre, Yuri Bashmet, Vadim Repin, and Julian Rachlin, as well as those of the LNOBT Ballet Troupe under Mstislav Rostropovich to Germany, Greece, Japan, Great Britain (Barbican Arts Centre, London) and the USA (John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington).
Gintautas Kevisas has been regular attendant at the annual conferences and general assemblies of the International Society for the Performing Arts (ISPA), the International Artist Managers' Association, and the European Festivals Association (EFA). He also participated in the ISPA conference in Stockholm, the "Modern Cultural Management as Part of the Cultural Policy" international conference in Vilnius, and round-table discussions of the EU ministers of culture and audiovisual affairs in Falun, Sweden, and in Paris, organized by the UNESCO.
At the present time he is a chairman of the National Cultural Institutions' Association, member of the presidential committee for Lithuania's Millennium Programme, associate member of the ISPA, IAMA, and EFA, and member of the curatorial board of the "Philharmonic Society of Nations" Orchestra. Among his distinctions are the honorary citizenship of New Orleans, the Order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas, the Royal Order of Norway, and the artistic award and honorary membership of the Min-On Concert Association, Japan.

JONAS ALEKSA - Chief Conductor Jonas Aleksa (b. 1939), one of the Lithuania's most distinguished conductors, was educated at the M.K.Ciurlionis School of Art and Lithuanian State Conservatory (present Academy of Music) where he studied choir conducting with Prof. Antanas Budriunas (graduating in 1961) before he entered the N.Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory in St. Petersburg where he completed a post-graduate course in opera and orchestra conducting with Yevgeny Mravinsky from 1963 to 1965. In 1973-4 he has also spent a training period at the Vienna Music Academy with Hans Swarowsky and Carl Oesterreicher. He has worked as a conductor with the Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theatre since 1965. The same year has seen his first conducted premiere - Carl Orff's opera Die Kluge. Since then his vast repertoire has come to include 30-odd operas, among which are the greatest masterpieces in the genre since its emergence, such as Giovanni Battista Pergolesi's La serva padrona, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, Ludwig van Beethoven's Fidelio, Gioacchino Rossini's La cambiale di matrimonio and Il barbiere di Siviglia, Richard Wagner's Lohengrin, Charles Gounod's Faust, Jules Massenet's Werther, Georges Bizet's Carmen, Giuseppe Verdi's Don Carlos, Piotr Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, Modest Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, Giacomo Puccini's Madama Butterfly and La Boheme, etc. Jonas Aleksa has also been first conductor of Lithuanian modern operas, which up to date include Vytautas Klova's Two Swords, Vytautas Barkauskas' Legend of Love, Julius Juzeliunas' Rebels, and Eduardas Balsys' Journey to Tilsit. Besides his main speciality as an opera conductor, he has also conducted more than 10 ballet premieres, which include Piotr Tchaikovsky's The Sleeping Beauty, Bela Bartok's The Miraculous Mandarin, Sergey Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet and Cinderella, Rodion Shchedrin's Anna Karenina, Juozas Gruodis' Jurate and Kastytis, and Antanas Rekasius' Aura. He acted as a production conductor in TV productions of Francis Poulenc's The Human Voice and B. Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle. Jonas Aleksa has frequently served as a guest conductor in opera productions at a number of foreign theatres, among which were Eugene Onegin at the Stadttheater Erfurt, Don Giovanni and La Boheme at M. Mussorgsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, and The Queen of Spades at the Slovak National Theatre in Bratislava. In 1990, the M. Mussorgsky Theatre in St. Petersburg invited him to conduct most performances of Eugene Onegin, Queen of Spades, Boris Godunov, Khovanshchina and The Golden Cockerel on its tour in Paris and Italy. For several periods (1975-90, 1994-7 and 1998-2000) and since January 2003 Jonas Aleksa has served as the LNOBT's chief conductor. In 1990-4 he has been appointed chief conductor of the Slovak National Theatre in Bratislava. From 1995 to 1998 he held the post of General Manager of the LNOBT. His major artistic distinctions include the Music Grand Prix of the Republic of Latvia (1994) and the 3rd class order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas (1995).

VLADIMIRAS PRUDNIKOVAS - Artistic Director of the Opera

Vladimiras Prudnikovas studied singing at the Lithuanian State Conservatory (present Academy of Music) with Prof. Zenonas Paulauskas. After graduating from it in 1979, he was invited to the Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theatre as a soloist and began teaching singing at the Lithuanian Academy of Music where he subsequently became Head of the Department of Singing, in 1992, and Professor, in 1993.
His first recognition as a singer came as early as in 1981 when he won the 2nd Prize at the Maria Callas Grand Prix, Athens, in the category of cantata-oratorio. He was awarded the Order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas in 1996 and became the first singer to receive the Lithuanian National Award in 1997. The next year he was nominated for the "Kipras", an annual award of the Lithuanian Opera Fellowship for the best singer of the year.
Vladimiras Prudnikovas gained international fame by performing at many world-renowned theatres and concert halls, such as the Thé?tre des Champs Elysées in Paris and New York City Opera, as well as in Italy, Japan, Malta, Greece, Germany, Poland, Finland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands. He also participated in the Echternach Festival in Luxembourg, Rossini Festival in Wildbad, Berliner Festwochen and Schleswig-Holstein Festival in Germany, Castell de Perelada and Sagra musicale Malatestiana in Spain, "Prague Spring" in the Czech Republic, Verdi Festival in Le Roncole, Italy, Savonlinna Opera Festival in Finland, and elsewhere.
His vast repertoire now includes principal roles in 40 operas and bass parts of over 70 symphonic works and oratorios.

TATJANA SEDUNOVA - Artistic Director of Ballet


Tatiana Sedunova received her training at the Kiev Choreography School, graduating in 1967, and the Vaganova Academy in St.Petersburg. She was a dancer with the Lithuanian Opera and Ballet Theatre from 1969 to 1976. In 1979 she went on to study at the Institute for Theatre, Music and Cinematography in St.Petersburg, receiving diploma in theatre history and theory in 1981.
Since 1975 she has produced a number of TV ballet projects and programmes about the distinguished ballet dancers for the Lithuanian National Television, including "The Farewell Symphony" (music by Joseph Haydn), "An Unusual Day" (music by Gioacchino Rossini, Benjamin Britten, and Ottorino Respighi), "The Divertimento for Ballet and Orchestra" (music by classical composers), "Waltz, Waltz, Waltz" (music by Mikhail Glinka, Jean Sibelius, and Alfred Schnittke), "The Wonderful Flower Seller" (music by Spanish composers), "A Vision of the Rose" (music by Karl Maria von Weber), etc. For her work as a TV producer she was awarded the silver medal at the 5th "Arabesk" International Festival in Perm in 1986.
For seven months, in 1990, she has taught classical dance in Jamaica. Since 1992 Tatiana Sedunova has been Artistic Director of the Ballet Troupe at the Lithuanian Opera and Ballet Theatre. Under her leadership, the troupe has achieved a particularly high professional level, which led to numerous collaborations with such prominent contemporary choreographers as Vladimir Vasiliev (Moscow), V. Mayorov (Moscow), Krzysztof Pastor (The Netherlands), L. Massine (Italy), A. Melanyin (Russia), Xin Peng Wang (Germany), and such world-renowned celebrities as Mstislav Rostropovich and Maya Plisetskaya.
In the past ten years the troupe has produced 20 premieres, performed at the Schleswig-Holstein Festival (Germany), Evian Festival (France), and at the international ballet festivals in Washington (USA) and Łódź (Poland), as well as toured extensively to the Netherlands, Denmark, Greece, Egypt, Spain, Japan, Costa Rica, London, and elsewhere.