Mikhail Pandzhavidze Turns 50!

On 5 March the principal stage director of the Bolshoi Theatre of Belarus Mikhail Pandzhavidze celebrated his 50th jubilee. On this day, the theatre hosted Mikhail Pandzhavidze’s pre-show meeting with admirers, spectators and media representatives!

Salome by Richard Strauss was presented in honour of Mikhail Pandzhavidze’s jubilee.

Mikhail Pandzhavidze first came to Minsk in 2010 as a director of Nabucco. It is charged with the task of staging this grand Giuseppe Verdi’s opera on the renovated stage of the Bolshoi Theatre, using all the latest technical equipment that appeared after the reconstruction. Pandzhavidze coped with this task brilliantly and after that he was invited by the general director of the theatre Vladimir Gridiushko to the post of the principal stage director of the theatre. His next production was Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca.

For nine years at the Bolshoi Theater of Belarus Pandzhavidze staged 14 opera productions, including such large-scale performances as Puccini’s Turandot, Verdi’s Aida and Macbeth, Strauss' Salome. His repertoire also includes Il barbiere di Siviglia, Pagliacci and chamber operas. He is also the author of thematic and anniversary concert programmes.

Recipient of the Medal of Francysk Skaryna Mikhail Pandzhavidze is the director of Dmitry Smolsky’s The Grey Legend. He is also the author of the national project for children Doctor Ouchithurts by Marina Morozova.

The principal stage director of the Bolshoi Theatre of Belarus was awarded the special prize of the President of the Republic of Belarus for significant achievements in the development of modern opera art and for the production of The Tsar’s Bride.

He has been the director of more than 20 productions in opera and ballet theatres of Tatarstan, Novosibirsk, Magnitogorsk, Yekaterinburg, in the Astrakhan State Music Theatre, the Moroccan National Theatre, among which there are: Boris Godunov by Modest Mussorgsky, Snegurochka and The Tsar’s Bride by Rimsky-Korsakov, Eugene Onegin and Iolanta by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Theatre Director by Mozart, Rigoletto, Nabucco and Aida by Giuseppe Verdi, Madama Butterfly and Tosca by Giacomo Puccini, Pagliacci by Ruggero Leoncavallo, etc.

From 2016 to 2018, he was the principal stage director of the Samara Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre. At the Musa Jalil Tatar State Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre was awarded Ğabdulla Tuqay State Prize of the Republic of Tatarstan for the production of Poet's Love (2008). This performance also became the winner of the Golden Mask National Theatre Award.