Ara Karapetyan

He was born in a pianist family. After finishing pianoforte class at the Yerevan secondary specialized music school named after P. I. Tchaikovsky at Yerevan conservatory (1984) he entered a music college, choral conducting department. During his graduation concert, at the age of seventeen he conducted a big professional choir and a student orchestra of the music college performing Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater and certain pieces of Verdi’s Requiem.

He entered and graduated from the St. – Petersburg (Leningrad) State Conservatory named after N. A. Rimsky – Korsakov (1987 – 1992), symphony conducting department, professor I. A. Musin’s studio; the same professor taught V. Gergiyev, Y. Temirkanov, O. Dmitriadi, S. Bychkov, V. Sinaysky, R. Barshay and many other students to become great conductors subsequently. On his fifth year of studying A. A. Karapetyan started working at the Music theatre of the St. – Petersburg conservatory, where he designed his own new rendition of Puccini’s Tosca.

In 1992 he was approved to the post of a conductor with the Perm academic theatre named after P. I. Tchaikovsky and spent five years working there. He conducted almost all performances of the current repertoire and at the same time in each season worked as co-directing conductor of new productions. One of them is Donizetti’s Don Pasquale (directed by G. G. Isaakyan), which was nominated for a Golden Mask in 1995 and won two awards: best female act and best male act of an opera performance.

In 1997 he started working with the Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Academic Music Theatre. As in the Perm theatre he conducted the majority of the repertoire, was a second conductor for all new productions and co-directed new performances as a conductor. In particular, on his first year at the theatre he co-directed Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan (directed by A. B. Titel).

During that period he also co-directed Puccini’s Madama Butterfly with the director L. Naletova and the designer E. Stepanova – the performance won almost all Golden Mask opera awards.

In 2005 he was designated for a post of Deputy Director General of the theatre (Mr. V. G. Urin was the Director General). He kept that post till 2013. His responsibilities included all engineering services, art workshops, stage department, finance and economy department and a legal unit.

In July 2013 he became Mr. Urin’s successor and was transferred to the Bolshoi theatre of Russia, where he had been working as the Director General till the middle of 2016.

While still working with the Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Academic Music Theatre he managed to produce a lot of other music projects. In 2001 he was invited as Music Director and co-directing conductor for the musical “Nord-Ost”: he assembled the orchestra, adapted the score for a symphonic orchestra and conducted the musical all the way up to the terrorist attack in Dubrovka theatre.

In 2002 – 2005 he used to tour across Russia giving concerts with local symphonic orchestras.

Due to his vast administrative and both artistic experience in 2016 he was invited to take up a post of vice president and artistic director for Propel performing arts and media, ltd. (PRC), managing to big companies: Tianjin Grand Theatre and Harbin Opera House. Later he moved to live in PRC. During his stay in PRC he arranged tours for the Mariinsky theatre, the Vienna philharmonic, opera houses of Genoa, Parma, Palermo (Italy), the Kremlin Ballet. In February 2017 he returned to Russia due to climatic adaptation problems.

In March 2017 he rediscovered cooperation with Russian theatres as a conductor, particularly with the Novosibirsk state academic opera and ballet theatre.

In September 2017 he was nominated as director of the Moscow chamber opera house named after Boris Pokrovsky.

In January 2018 he moved to Novosibirsk to assume the post of the Director General of the Novosibirsk state academic opera and ballet theatre.