Lidiya Yankovskaya Lands The Sunday Times ahead of Return to ENO • March 2024
London, United Kingdom
Photo by Todd Rosenberg
Ahead of her return to English National Opera to conduct Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle, Lidiya Yankovskaya spoke to The Sunday Times about prejudice, parenting, and the potential future for ENO.
“English National Opera needed a new conductor to jump into a production of a tricky and disturbing 20th-century masterpiece. Luckily there was an obvious candidate: why not get the conductor who had led another challenging 20th century masterpiece at ENO — and had a triumph?
So the Russian-American conductor Lidiya Yankovskaya, the conductor of last year’s acclaimed ENO production of Gorecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, stepped in. That work is not an opera but Yankovskaya, 37, says that putting it on stage added a deeper element. ‘It’s what you want opera to be: enhancing all the individual forms by coming together.’
Since she sees light in the tunnel for ENO, I have to ask: what if the company wanted her to take the helm for good — can she steady a foundering ship? ‘One never knows what will happen. Their mission to bring opera to the people is beautiful. My hope is just to do what I can to help them gain support for it. Because right now the company has been put in a position where it has to do the impossible.’”
Critical Acclaim
Photo by Tristram Kenton / English National Opera
“Lidiya Yankovskaya draws out a lyrical, polished reading of the score — compelling in its dreamlike, crepuscular flow.”
–The Times
“The piece’s atmospheric qualities register strongly, aided in every single bar by the remarkable musicians of ENO’s vast orchestra and conductor Yankovskaya, who shapes Bartók’s 65-minute structure with complete conviction.”
–The Stage
“Yankovskaya builds the tension inexorably, placing the climax not at the famous opening of the fifth door (overpowering though it is), but with the grinding dissonances that accompany Bluebeard’s yielding to Judith’s demands to give her the key to the seventh. The playing – the brass fierce, the strings rich and dark, the woodwind slithery like blood – is excellent.”
–The Guardian
“Yankovskaya drew a velvety, ominous sound from the orchestra, a real snap to the strings, snarl to the woodwinds and flare to the brass, all at their best at the fieriest of moments.”
–Bachtrack
“The production benefited from the lyrical and polished conducting of Yankovskaya.”
–BNN Breaking
“Yankovskaya was impressive... There was plenty of discordant bite, and sufficient power when the fifth door was opened to reveal Bluebeard’s vast kingdom. The orchestra rose to the occasion, impeccable playing across the board.”
–Seen and Heard International
“Much of the drama in this piece comes from the orchestra who played superbly under Lidiya Yankovskaya, leaving the wrenching dissonances of the score to slither round in the memory like a box of the most venomous of snakes. Shattering.”
–Theatre Thoughts
“The orchestra’s tableaus were spectacular in their resplendent chordal majesty or forensically detailed in the instrumental solos, all guided by the baton of Yankovskaya, who set a brisk set of tempi.”
–Plays to See
“Bartok’s rich, yearning music is beautifully played by the orchestra under the baton of Lidiya Yankovskaya.”
–The Arbuturian
“The English National Opera Orchestra, under the baton of Yankovskaya, captures all of the subtleties and nuances that are in the score while effectively revealing the overall structure of the opera.”
–Opera Online
“A miracle of mood-setting: from the first eerie modal twist of the wind instruments (an unforgettable phrase) to the huge orchestral outbursts that bring a blaze of expressionist light into the stage picture, it is a vast symmetrical hour of music which from chromaticism veers towards an overwhelming C major at the centre and then back to the darkness. On Thursday, Yankovskaya powered the orchestra along strongly…”
–The Telegraph
“Musically it is a magnificent work, and under the baton of Yankovskaya, a fiercely committed advocate for contemporary works on the leading edge of classical music, it came over with huge power.”
–The Article
“Impressive production…Yankovskaya drawing yearning, shot-silk sonorities from the ENO orchestra.”
–The Spectator
“Congratulations must go to Yankovskaya…not a moment is wasted. Her encouragement of the brass section often makes Bartok sound like Wagner, and the ENO orchestra sound twice its size. From a soft and muted beginning to the triumphant opening of the door to Bluebeard’s kingdom, every moment has tension, torture or release. Everything comes together to create an expertly sleek and sexy performance.”
–Everything Theatre
“The wonderful ENO band was expertly conducted by Yankovskaya. Tempi were very secure and the brilliance of Bartók’s orchestration and composition cut through the on-stage angst and gloom like a laser.”
–London Unattached
“The real storytelling is done by the orchestra. I cannot recall the ENO Orchestra in finer fettle, driven by Yankovskaya's confident baton. She finds the light and shade (well, shade and darker shade) in Bartok's mesmeric melodies, the continually shifting music knocking us continually off-balance as much as the contents of the room do to Judith. The music is never comfortable, but, like the Duke, it retains its power to seduce, lulling you into a security that instantly explodes to remind you of the danger.”
–Broadway World