Maestro’s Jubilee!

On 29 June the Honoured Art Worker of the Republic of Belarus, recipient of the Francysk Skaryna Medal Nikolai Koliadko celebrates his 70^th birthday! During June, until the significant date, the maestro will conduct The Little Humpbacked Horse by Rodion Shchedrin (on 10 June), The Fountain of Bakhchisarai by Boris Asafiev (on 17 June), Spartacus by Aram Khachaturian (on 22 June), Le Corsaire (on 24 June).

Nikolai Koliadko has been working at the Belarusian Bolshoi Theatre since 1979 — almost forty-five years. His repertoire includes numerous opera and ballet productions.

He is a graduate of the Gnesins State Music and Pedagogical Institute in Moscow. After graduating the young man worked as a second conductor in the Iosif Zhinovich National Academic Folk Orchestra of Belarus. Then he served in the army, after which Nikolai Koliadko joined the company of the Bolshoi Theatre of Belarus. The first performance he conducted at the theatre was children's opera production The Little Tower Chamber, and the first production, in which he became the musical director, was Ludwig Minkus’ Don Quixote.

In those years, among colleagues and teachers of the young conductor were such masters as Yaroslav Voshchak, Tatiana Kolomiytseva, Vladimir Moshensky, director Semyon Stein.

Koliadko is a music director and conductor of numerous productions, including operas Un ballo in mascheraand and Don Carlo by Giuseppe Verdi, Carmen by George Bizet, Cavalleria rusticana by Pietro Mascagni, The Medium by Gian Carlo Menotti, Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, Gianni Schicchi by Giacomo Puccini, Andrey Bondarenko’s The Prince of Novograd; and ballets Don Quixote by Ludwig Minkus, Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s  Serenade and The Sleeping Beauty, Cesare Pugni’s La Esmeralda, La Fille mal gardée by Louis Herold, Tristan and Isolde to Richard Wagner’s music, Adolphe Adam’s Giselle, ou les Wilis, Pas de Quatre  by Cesare Pugni, Flower Festival in Genzano by  Edvard Helsted, The Little Humpbacked Horse by Rodion Shchedrin.

As a symphonic conductor, Nikolai Koliadko has worked with orchestras of the Teatro Massimo Bellini in Sicily and Prague Radio, Shanghai and Cairo Opera, with Tokyo, Rostov, Kiev, Volgograd, Dnepropetrovsk, Chisinau Symphony Orchestras and the China Broadcasting Film Symphony Orchestra.

He has been on tour in Germany, Greece, Spain, China, Netherlands, Portugal, Thailand, Turkey, Switzerland, Japan.