Alexander Lazarev is a Soviet and Russian conductor. He was born on 5 July 1945 in Moscow. He has been named People's Artist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and received the Mikhail Glinka State Prize of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.
Lazarev studied bayan at the October Revolution Music and Pedagogical College and attended the Gnessin State Musical and Pedagogical Institute in 1963–1964. After serving in the Soviet Army from 1964 to 1967, he entered the Rimsky-Korsakov Leningrad Conservatory, where he studied conducting with Ilya Sherrman. From 1968 to 1975 he studied at the Tchaikovsky Moscow Conservatory and its postgraduate programme with Leo Ginzburg.
In 1971 Lazarev won first prize at the Third All-Union Conductors' Competition. The following year he won first prize and a gold medal at the Herbert von Karajan Competition in West Berlin.
He joined the Bolshoi Theatre in 1973. On 7 April 1974, he conducted the Bolshoi's first Russian-language production of Sergei Prokofiev's The Gambler, in its second version, staged by Boris Pokrovsky. Lazarev served as the Bolshoi Theatre's chief conductor and artistic director from 1987 to 1995, leading numerous opera productions. Video recordings preserve his performances of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's Mlada, Mikhail Glinka's A Life for the Tsar, Modest Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, and Pyotr Tchaikovsky's The Maid of Orleans.
Alongside his work at the Bolshoi, Lazarev was chief conductor of the Duisburg Symphony Orchestra, now the Duisburg Philharmonic Orchestra, from 1988 to 1993. He was guest conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra from 1992 to 1995. In 1994 he became guest conductor of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, which he led from 1997 to 2005. He directed the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra from 2008 to 2011.
In 2015, after a long break from opera productions in Russia, Lazarev staged Mussorgsky's Khovanshchina at the Stanislavsky Music Theatre in Moscow. In 2016 he followed it with Prokofiev's The Love for Three Oranges and Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades.
His distinctions include the Lenin Komsomol Prize in 1977, the title of Honoured Artist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1976, the title of People's Artist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1982, the Mikhail Glinka State Prize of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1986, and appointment as a Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic in 2004.