Boris Pokrovskii

Born Jan. 10 (23), 1912, in Moscow. Soviet operatic director and teacher. People’s Artist of the USSR (1961).

Pokrovskii graduated from the directing department of the State Institute of Theatrical Arts in 1937. From 1937 to 1943 he was a stage director at the Gorky Theater of Opera and Ballet, and beginning in 1939 the theater’s artistic director. He became a stage director at the Bolshoi Theater in 1943 and the theater’s principal director in 1968, a post he had also held between 1952 and 1963. Operas staged by Pokrovskii at the Bolshoi include Serov’s The Evil One (1947; State Prize of the USSR, 1948), Smetana’s The Bartered Bride (1948; State Prize of the USSR, 1949), Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sadko (1949; State Prize of the USSR, 1950), Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro (1956, with G. P. Ansimov), Prokofiev’s War and Peace (1959), Dzerzhinskii’s Man’s Fate (1961), Prokofiev’s Semen Kotko (1970) and The Gambler (1974), and Glinka’s Ruslan and Liudmila (1972). His productions of War and Peace at the Leningrad Malyi Opera Theater (1946; State Prize of the USSR, 1947) and at the Sofia People’s Opera (1957) are well known.

Since 1972, Pokrovskii has been artistic director of the Moscow Chamber Music Theater, where he has staged Shchedrin’s opera Not Only Love (1973) and Shostakovich’s The Nose (1974). He also teaches at the State Institute of Theatrical Arts, where he became a professor in 1954. Pokrovskii has been awarded the Order of Lenin, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, and several medals.