Sergey Yeltsin

Sergey Vitalyevich Yeltsin (also spelled Yeltsyn) was a Soviet opera conductor and music teacher. He was born in St. Petersburg on May 4, 1897, and became known as a major figure in the musical life of Leningrad. He was awarded the title People's Artist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1954. He also served as chief conductor and artistic director of the orchestra of the S. M. Kirov Opera and Ballet Theatre in 1953–1956 and again in 1960–1962.

He was born into the family of Vitaly Yakovlevich Yeltsin, an accountant and provincial secretary; his mother, Anna Matveyevna, was the daughter of a priest. From 1907 he studied at Ya. G. Gurevich's gymnasium, graduating with a gold medal in 1914. In 1915 he entered Petrograd University in the natural sciences division of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics, and at the same time entered the Petrograd Conservatory in the piano class of Professor L. V. Nikolayev.

In 1916 he transferred to the Military Medical Academy, where for some time he was an assistant to Academician Ivan Pavlov, with whom he maintained friendly relations throughout his life. After leaving the academy, he returned to the conservatory. He graduated in 1919 in piano, and in 1923 in conducting, under E. A. Cooper, and composition, under M. O. Steinberg and V. P. Kalafati.

From 1919 he taught at the Petrograd Conservatory and was one of the initiators of the creation of its Opera Studio. In 1922, in the conservatory's opera class, he conducted Alexander Dargomyzhsky's opera The Mermaid. In the spring of 1923, at the opening of the Opera Studio of the Petrograd Conservatory, he conducted Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's The Snow Maiden. In 1928 he traveled with the conservatory's Opera Studio to Salzburg, Austria, for the Mozart celebrations.

At the conservatory he held a number of teaching posts: acting associate professor in 1928, associate professor in 1932, and professor in 1935–1939 and 1948–1970 in the opera department and the department of opera-symphonic conducting. He also headed the symphonic conducting department in the 1948–1949 academic year. He taught a special conducting class, an orchestral class, and a course on the foundations of conducting technique in the historical-theoretical division. Among his students were the conductors K. A. Simeonov, A. S. Badkhen, V. D. Rutter, N. K. Gan, and others.

As early as 1918, after a competition, he was accepted into the Mariinsky Theatre as a répétiteur pianist. From 1928 he was a conductor of the theatre, by then the Petrograd (Leningrad) Opera and Ballet Theatre, and in 1953–1956 and 1960–1962 he was its chief conductor. Under his direction, productions from the Russian and international repertoire were staged, including Rigoletto, Faust, La Traviata, Sadko, Boris Godunov, Prince Igor, and Sergei Prokofiev's Semyon Kotko.

In 1940 he was given the title Honored Artist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, and in 1954 he received the title People's Artist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. During the war, from 1941 to 1944, he lived in evacuation in Molotov (Perm).

Yeltsin possessed twelve languages and had encyclopedic knowledge in music, literature, the visual arts, cultural history, and the natural sciences. He died in Leningrad on February 26, 1970, after a severe and prolonged illness. He was buried at the Volkovo Lutheran Cemetery in St. Petersburg next to the grave of his wife, Olga Dmitriyevna Golubkova.

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