JONAS ALEKSA


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).

LIUTAURAS BALCIUNAS


Liutauras Balciunas was born into a family of musicians in Vilnius. He began his formal musical training at the M.K. Ciurlionis School of Art, graduating in 1982 both as a pianist and a percussionist. He continued to study the percussion at the Gnessins' Institute in Moscow where he instantly became laureate and diploma holder of the All-Union Percussion Competitions.

In 1989 Liutauras Balciunas was appointed Leader of the percussion group at the Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra (under Vladimir Fedoseyev as its chief conductor).

In 1994 he entered the N. Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory in St. Petersburg, the Faculty of Opera and Orchestra Conducting, where he studied with Prof. Ilya Musin - one of the world's most famous conducting teachers, among whose former pupils are widely acclaimed present-day conductors, such as Yury Temirkanov and Valery Gergiev. After graduating in 1996, he became Assistant Conductor to Vladimir Fedoseyev and Deputy Conductor of the Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra.

In recent years he has successfully conducted eminent symphony orchestras, such as Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra, St. Petersburg Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, Basel Symphony Orchestra, Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra, and philharmonic symphony orchestras of St. Petersburg, Krasnoyarsk and Nizhny Novgorod.

His repertoire includes not only classical symphonies and symphonic poems by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert, Johannes Brahms, Richard Strauss, Piotr Tchaikovsky, Dmitry Shostakovich, Sergey Prokofiev and Arnold Schoenberg, but also contemporary works by Lithuanian, Russian and other European and American composers, such as Andrei Eshpai, Onute Narbutaite, N. Moret, H. Rouse and many others.

Serving as Chief Conductor of the LNOBT in 2000-2, Liutauras Balciunas conducted the semi-staged performance of Giuseppe Verdi's Requiem and new productions of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, Piotr Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades, Kurt Weill's Women (based on Kurt Weill's ballet chanté Seven Deadly Sins and his songs), Red Giselle (a ballet choreographed by Boris Eifman's and based on the music by Tchaikovsky, Bizet, Adam, and Schnittke), and joint production of Georges Bizet's Carmen with the famous Polish-born director Lech Majewsky. His current record credits include four full-length CDs, featuring him as a conductor in the LNOBT productions of Verdi's Messa da Requiem, Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades, and Kurt Weill's Women, as well as in concert of internationally acclaimed opera soloists, Violeta Urmana-Urmanaviciute and Virgilijus Noreika.

ALVYDAS SULCYS


Alvydas Sulcys studied choir conducting at the Lithuanian Academy of Music (graduating in 1967) and opera and orchestra conducting at the Yekaterinburg State Conservatory with Prof. M. Paverman. He later held different positions as an Assistant Conductor of the "Trimitas" Wind Orchestra in 1966-9, Professor of conducting and opera at the Sverdlovsk State Conservatory in 1969-72, and conductor of the Khabarovsk Symphony Orchestra, in 1972-4, and the Crimean Symphony Orchestra in Yalta in 1974-84.

Alvydas Sulcys has been conductor of the LNOBT since 1984. His orchestral repertoire includes symphonies by Dmitry Shostakovich, Sergey Prokofiev, Ludwig van Beethoven, Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler, Anton Bruckner, Maurice Ravel, Piotr Tchaikovsky, Aleksandr Skriabin, Sergey Rachmaninov, Bela Bartok, Arthur Honegger, and Antanas Raciunas, as well as Igor Stravinsky's Petrushka, G. Sviridov's Pathetic Oratorio, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Requiem, and many others. His repertoire at the LNOBT comprises over 10 performances, including Don Carlos, La traviata, Macbeth, Hänsel und Gretel, Swan Lake, Raymonda, La Sylphide, The Blue Danube, Cipollino, and others.

MARTYNAS STASKUS


Martynas Staskus (b. 1969) studied orchestra and opera conducting at the Lithuanian Academy of Music. Immediately after his graduation in 1995, he joined the staff of the LNOBT as an Assistant Conductor, where he subsequently became conductor in 1996. He has also acted as its Chief Conductor in the period from October 1997 to September 1998.

Martynas Staskus is a prizewinner of numerous national and international choir conducting competitions. His current repertoire includes Johann Strauss' Wiener Blut, Giacomo Puccini's Tosca, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Carl Maria von Weber's Der Freischütz, Giuseppe Verdi's Aida and Nabucco, Jurgis Gaizauskas' Burattino, Bronius Kutavicius' The Bear, Mikis Theodarakis' Zorba the Greek, Piotr Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker, Charles Gounod's Faust, Georges Bizet-Rodion Shchedrin's Carmen, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Maurice Ravel's Daphnis et Chloe, Carnival in Venice (based on the music by Karoly Goldmark, Léo Delibes, and others), Benjamin Britten's Let's Make and Opera!, Giacomo Puccini's Gianni Schicchi, etc. He has conducted on tours in Holland, Germany, Italy, Estonia, France, Denmark, Taiwan, and elsewhere.

Martynas Staskus' repertoire is not limited genre-wise: besides opera, he has conducted quite a few large-scale orchestral and choral compositions, such as Antonin Dvorak's Requiem, Franz Schubert's Stabat Mater, Johann Sebastian Bach's Passion of St. Marcus, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi's Stabat Mater and many others.

VYTAUTAS VIRZONIS


Joining the LNOBT's artistic personnel in 1953, Vytautas Virzonis (b. 1930) began his work first as a pianist and then as an assistant conductor. After making his debut as an opera conductor with Vano Gokiyeli's Red Riding Hood in 1959, he was promoted to the LNOBT's conductor in 1961.

Under Vytautas Virzonis' baton the theatre produced 43 opera and 10 ballet premieres, which add to his current repertoire amounting to 60-odd operas and 15 ballets. Among them are Giuseppe Verdi's Aida, Rigoletto, Il trovatore, and Otello, Giacomo Puccini's Madama Butterfly, Tosca, and La fanciulla del West, Jacques Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffmann, Gaetano Donizetti's The Elixir of Love and Lucia di Lammermoor, Charles Gounod's Romeo and Juliet and Faust, Vincenzo Bellini's Norma, Aleksandr Borodin's Prince Igor (directed by Boris Pokrovsky), Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana, and many others. He first conducted five premieres of Lithuanian operas and acted as a production conductor in the world premiere of Andreas Pflüger's ballet Catharsis in 1990. In 1991 together with the Lithuanian-born American conductor Alvydas Vasaitis he conducted the first production of Amilcare Ponchielli's opera I lituani at the Lithuanian Opera of Chicago and the LNOBT. With him conducting, the LNOBT's performances featured the world's greatest opera and ballet stars, such as Edda Moser, Virginia Zeani, Grace Bumbry, James King, Nicolae Herlea, Luis Quilioco, Raisa Struchkova, Natalia Bessmertnova, Ygor Yebra and many others.

His international appearances include the LNOBT's tour to Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow, in 1986 where he conducted Otello, The Sleeping Beauty and Coppélia, to Teatr Wielki, Warsaw, in 1988, where the aforementioned performances were concluded with Norma, and to Heilbronn where he conducted Don Carlos, Giselle, Lucia di Lammermoor and Der Freischütz. As a conductor he has performed in Riga, Tallinn, Moscow, Kazan, Chisinau, Yerevan, Bulgaria, Germany, Chicago, Holland, Finland (Savonlinna Opera Festival), Belgium, Switzerland, Taiwan, and elsewhere.In 1995 he founded the LNOBT Chamber Orchestra, which thus far thrice toured Switzerland (including appearances in Basel and Zürich) and Germany (in Nürnberg, Stuttgart and elsewhere).

Since 1963 Vytautas Virzonis has been teaching conducting and currently holding professorship at the Conducting Department of the Lithuanian Academy of Music.