Isidor Zak was a Soviet Russian conductor and music teacher. He was born in Odesa on February 14, 1909. From the age of five he studied music with B. M. Reingbald. In 1925 he completed theoretical courses at the Ludwig van Beethoven Music and Drama Institute in Odesa, studying with V. A. Zolotaryov, and in 1928 he graduated from the conducting department of the Rimsky-Korsakov Leningrad Conservatory, where he studied with N. A. Malko.
From 1928 to 1937 Zak worked as a conductor in opera and music theaters in Leningrad, Vladivostok, Khabarovsk, Kuibyshev, and Dnipropetrovsk. From 1937 to 1944 he was associated with the Gorky Opera and Ballet Theater named after A. Pushkin. In 1945 he became chief conductor of the Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet Theater, holding that position until 1949. He later served as chief conductor at the Lviv Opera and Ballet Theater, the Kharkiv Opera and Ballet Theater, and the Abai Kazakh Opera and Ballet Theater in Alma-Ata.
Zak made his principal contribution to the development of operatic art in Chelyabinsk and Novosibirsk. He was one of the founders and the first chief conductor of the Mikhail Glinka Chelyabinsk Opera and Ballet Theater, where he worked from 1955 to 1968. In 1968 he returned to Novosibirsk and again led the orchestra of the Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet Theater until 1986; from 1986 to 1992 he continued there as a conductor.
From 1968 Zak also taught at the Mikhail Glinka Novosibirsk Conservatory, where he remained until the end of his life. From 1992 to 1998 he was professor of the conducting department. A singer who had worked with him at the beginning of his operatic career, V. Galuzin, called Zak “an entire era in conducting” and “a titan conductor.”
His repertory included a large number of operas and ballets staged over several decades. Among the operas he conducted were works by Rachmaninoff, Glinka, Bizet, Tchaikovsky, Koval, Muradeli, Verdi, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Smetana, Brusilovsky, Borodin, Puccini, Dargomyzhsky, Meyerbeer, Donizetti, Offenbach, and others. His ballet productions included Ivan Morozov's Doctor Aybolit, Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet and Cinderella, Shchedrin's Carmen Suite, Khachaturian's Gayane, and other works.
Zak received the title Honored Artist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1945, People's Artist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1959, and People's Artist of the USSR in 1976. He was awarded the Stalin Prize, second class, in 1948 for conducting the ballet Doctor Aybolit on the stage of the Novosibirsk State Academic Theater of Opera and Ballet. In 1981 he became an honorary corresponding member of the French Academy of Fine Arts.
Isidor Zak died in Novosibirsk on August 16, 1998, and was buried at Zaeltsovskoye Cemetery in the city. His memory has been preserved in later commemorations: since 2001 an International Conductors' Festival named after him has been held in Chelyabinsk, a memorial plaque was installed in 2009 on the Novosibirsk house where he lived, and the concert hall of the Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet Theater was named in his honor, reopening after reconstruction on December 2, 2017.
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