Lidiya Yankovskaya is a fiercely committed advocate for Slavic masterpieces, operatic rarities, and contemporary works on the leading edge of classical music. She has conducted more than 40 world premieres, including 17 operas, and her strength as a visionary collaborator has guided new perspectives on staged and symphonic repertoire from Carmen and Queen of Spades to Price and Prokofiev. Her daring performances before and amid the pandemic earned recognition from the Chicago Tribune, which praised her as “the very model of how to survive adversity, and also how to thrive in it,” while naming her Chicagoan of the Year.

Ms. Yankovskaya has recently conducted Eugene Onegin at Staatsoper Hamburg, Symphony of Sorrowful Songs at English National Opera, Rusalka at Santa Fe Opera, Carmen at Houston Grand Opera, and Don Giovanni at Seattle Opera. Elsewhere she has led Der Freischütz at Wolf Trap Opera, Edward Tulane at Minnesota Opera, and Taking Up Serpents at Washington National Opera and the Glimmerglass Festival. On the concert stage, recent engagements include Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Houston Symphony, and Julia Wolfe’s Anthracite Fields with Bang on a Can All-Stars and The Choir of Trinity Wall Street at Carnegie Hall.

In the six years since her appointment as Elizabeth Morse and Genius Music Director of COT, Ms. Yankovskaya has spearheaded the commissioning of 11 new operas, advancing the work of seven female composers and seven creators of color. She has led the Chicago premieres of Heggie’s Moby-Dick, Talbot’s Everest, Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta, Rachmaninoff’s Aleko, and Szymanowski’s King Roger. Under her leadership, COT has also established the Vanguard Initiative, an immersive two-year residency for emerging opera composers that culminates with the development of a full-length opera, enriching the repertory with new voices and experiences that resonate with today’s audiences.