Konstantin Simeonov

Konstantin Simeonov was a Soviet, Ukrainian, and Russian conductor and teacher. He was born on June 20, 1910, in the village of Kaznakovo, in Starytsa district of Tver province in the Russian Empire.

From 1918 to 1928 he studied in the regency, conducting, and instrumental classes attached to the Petrograd People's Choral Academy, now the M. I. Glinka Choral College of the St. Petersburg State Academic Capella, and sang there under the direction of M. G. Klimov. From 1928 to 1931 he served as conductor of the capella. In 1936 he graduated from the Rimsky-Korsakov Leningrad Conservatory, where he studied with I. A. Musin, A. V. Gauk, and S. V. Yeltsin.

Between 1936 and 1960 he appeared mainly as a symphonic conductor. In 1936 and 1937 he was conductor of the Symphony Orchestra of Karelian Radio in Petrozavodsk, now the Symphony Orchestra of the Karelian State Philharmonic. From 1938 to 1941 he was second conductor of the State Symphony Orchestra of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic at the Belarusian Philharmonic. He took part in the war and was a prisoner in the Lamsdorf-318-F camp and in the Northern Alps.

In 1946 he won first prize at the All-Union Review of Young Conductors in Leningrad, which opened the way for active work with many orchestras across the Soviet Union. From 1946 to 1948 he was conductor of the Taras Shevchenko Kyiv Opera and Ballet Theater, from 1949 to 1957 of the State Symphony Orchestra of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, and from 1957 to 1961 chief conductor of the Ukrainian Radio Symphony Orchestra.

He served as chief conductor and artistic director of the Taras Shevchenko Kyiv Opera and Ballet Theater from 1961 to 1966 and again from 1975 to 1976. In 1964, while touring at La Scala in Milan with the Bolshoi Theatre company from Moscow, he received high praise from critics for his performance of Tchaikovsky's opera The Queen of Spades, and was called the Russian Karajan. From 1967 to 1975 he was chief conductor and artistic director of the S. Kirov Leningrad Opera and Ballet Theater, now the Mariinsky Theatre. He also toured abroad, including in Italy, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Greece.

Recordings of Simeonov survive in works by Mykola Arkas, Alexander Borodin, Mykola Lysenko, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, and Dmitri Shostakovich. He was also active as a pedagogue and became a professor at the Rimsky-Korsakov Leningrad Conservatory in 1969.

Among his honors were first prize at the All-Union Review of Young Conductors in 1946, the title People's Artist of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1960, and People's Artist of the Soviet Union in 1962. In 1976 he received the Taras Shevchenko State Prize of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic for conducting the opera Katerina Izmailova by Shostakovich at the Taras Shevchenko Kyiv Opera and Ballet Theater. He also received the Order of the Red Banner of Labour, the Order of the Patriotic War, Second Class, two Orders of the Badge of Honour, and medals.

As a production conductor at the Taras Shevchenko Kyiv Opera and Ballet Theater, he conducted operas including Taras Bulba, The Queen of Spades, Carmen, Aleko, The Fate of a Man, Mazeppa, Lohengrin, Khovanshchina, Taras Shevchenko, Katerina Izmailova, and Quiet Flows the Don, as well as the ballets Symphonic Dances and Francesca da Rimini. He died on January 3, 1987, in Leningrad and was buried at Bolsheokhtinskoye Cemetery.

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