Lidiya Yankovskaya Delivers 'Strong WNO Debut'
“Yankovskaya does a terrific job as a conductor of this score bringing out the many colors and styles of music with her thirteen musicians who prove game to the challenge.” Lidiya Yankovskaya makes her Washington National Opera debut leading the world premiere of Kamala Sankaram’s Taking Up Serpents.
January 16, 2019
Photo by Scott Suchman
Conductor Lidiya Yankovskaya has just made her house debut at Washington National Opera, leading the world premiere of Kamala Sankaram’s Taking Up Serpents, an opera set in the American South that explores religious traditions and family.
Read reviews:
“Russian conductor Lidiya Yankovskaya made a strong WNO debut at the podium, skillfully bringing together the disparate sounds in the pit.”
Washington Classical Review
“The most interesting parts were Sankaram’s atmospheric orchestrations, brought out by Lidiya Yankovskaya in the pit.”
The Washington Post
“Her orchestrations, performed by a fully game Washington National Orchestra under the direction of Lidiya Yankovskaya in her WNO debut, emphasize the unease of Kayla's reluctant return home to her estranged family. The orchestra not only creates unusual noises with bassoons minus the mouthpieces, but there is also what may be the first use in opera of the children's toy called the whirly tube, those ribbed plastic hoses that emit an otherworldly sound when swung around.”
Broadway World
“Sankaram also has integrated some curious contemporary instrumentation for a small orchestra, including electric and acoustic guitar, a drum set, water phone, and, most delicious of all, “whirly tubes” with their mysterious sound and snakelike waving. Lidiya Yankovskaya does a terrific job as a conductor of this score bringing out the many colors and styles of music with her thirteen musicians who prove game to the challenge.”
DC Theatre Scene
“Conductor Lidiya Yankovskaya ably shaped the score: Its spare orchestration is built on string drones and slithering glissandos and colored with punchy special effects, such as the whirly tubes that make a soft, creepy hooting sound, associated with Kayla’s memories, and the glockenspiel that plays as her father brands her as a sinful daughter of Eve and that later accompanies her triumphant assertion, ‘I am the light.’”
Wall Street Journal
Snakes on A Stage: Lidiya Yankovskaya in Washington Post
“What makes an American opera? Many of the support programs designed to promote new work create the somewhat amusing spectacle of American artists such as Kamala Sankaram, whose father is from South India, or the opera’s conductor, Lidiya Yankovskaya, whose family emigrated from Russia when she was 9, compressing themselves into someone else’s ‘American’ template.” Ahead of her house debut at Washington National Opera, the conductor spoke with Anne Midgette about the world premiere of Taking Up Serpents.
January 6, 2019
Ahead of her Washington National Opera debut conducting the world premiere of Kamala Sankaram’s Taking Up Serpents, conductor Lidiya Yankovskaya spoke with the Washington Post about new music, speaking in tongues, and reconciling personal experience with an opera’s subject matter.
Performances will be at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. on January 11 and 13; tickets can be purchased via WNO.
What makes an American opera? Companies across the country seem to be perpetually asking this question. The Metropolitan Opera is said to have turned down Rufus Wainwright’s opera “Prima Donna” on the grounds that it was in French and therefore not an American opera. Other companies turn to Hollywood — the Minnesota Opera has presented operatic versions of “The Shining” and “The Manchurian Candidate” — or book adaptations — the San Francisco Opera has offered “Dolores Claiborne” (based on the Stephen King novel) and “The Bonesetter’s Daughter” (based on the Amy Tan novel). Many of the support programs designed to promote new work create the somewhat amusing spectacle of American artists such as Sankaram, whose father is from South India, or the opera’s conductor, Lidiya Yankovskaya, whose family emigrated from Russia when she was 9, compressing themselves into someone else’s “American” template.
“Going into this opera, that worried me,” Yankovskaya says. “It’s much more difficult to express something you’re not intimately familiar with yourself. But then, of course, I’m not intimately familiar with what it’s like to be a courtesan in Europe,” which hasn’t stopped her from conducting “La traviata.”