Graduated from the Faculty of Musical Theatre Directing of the Leningrad State Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatoire (course of Professor Tikhomirov and Professor Glikman).
From 1984 to 1988 he was Principal Stage Director of the Kazakh Abai Theatre of Opera and Ballet (Alma-Ata), where he staged the operas Maria Stuarda, Eugene Onegin, Carmen and Oratorio Pathétique.
Since 1988 he has been a stage director with the Mariinsky Theatre. He has worked on productions of the operas Kashchei the Immortal (1994), Tosca (1995) and Prince Igor (1996). In 1997 he staged Aida at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. As an assistant director, he has been involved in production of the opera War and Peace at the Mariinsky Theatre in 2000 and at the Metropolitan Opera in 2002.
At festivals and on Mariinsky Theatre tours, he has staged productions of the operas Prince Igor (Greece), Salambô (Mérida, Spain), Tosca and Prince Igor (Savonlinna, Finland) and Maddalena (Mikkeli, Finland). In 2002 he staged Giacomo Puccini’s opera Turandot in the open air, presenting the work to the public in the surroundings of Vyborg Castle.
Between 2002 and 2010 he has staged productions of Iolanta, Aleko, Rigoletto, Die Fledermaus, the national operas Kakhym-Turya (nominated for a Golden Mask award, 2003) and Akmulla at the Bashkir Theatre of Opera and Ballet, Aleko at the Yerevan Theatre of Opera and Ballet, Il trovatore at the Kazakh Abai Theatre of Opera and Ballet, War and Peace at the Moscow Theatre of the Soviet Army (2005) marking sixty years since Victory Day in WWII, the operas Boris Godunov, Khovanshchina, Tosca, Eugene Onegin, Prince Igor and Verdi’s Requiem at the Novosibirsk Theatre of Opera and Ballet, Tosca (2007) and Le nozze di Figaro at the Yekaterinburg Theatre of Opera and Ballet (2009), which received a Golden Mask award nomination. Between 2008 and 2010 he has also staged a range of productions for the Mariinsky Theatre when on tour, among them Un ballo in maschera (Cyprus), Turandot, Madama Butterfly and La bohème (Baden-Baden), Prince Igor (Japan), The Turn of the Screw (Finland), War and Peace (Washington) and Karl Millöcker’s comic opera Gasparon at the Theatre of Musical Comedy (St Petersburg).
