Viktor Fedotov (Viktor Andreyevich Fedotov; 8 July 1933 – 3 December 2001) was a Soviet and Russian conductor and music educator. He was chief conductor of the Mariinsky Theatre from 1975 to 1976, a professor at the Rimsky-Korsakov St. Petersburg State Conservatory, and was named People's Artist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1977.
Born in New Aleksandrovka in the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, he played the bayan, balalaika, and guitar as a child. In autumn 1945, at the age of twelve, he moved to postwar Leningrad to pursue a musical education. Circumstances led him to become a pupil of the wind band of the Air Force Academy, where he learned to play oboe, trumpet, alto horn, tenor horn, and baritone horn. He made his conducting debut with that ensemble in 1948.
In 1951 Fedotov hoped to enter the conducting and composition departments of the Leningrad Conservatory and showed his works to the composer Viktor Voloshinov. Since applicants were then required first to complete the orchestral department, he enrolled there instead. He graduated with distinction in 1956, studying with P. Kurilov and Professor Mikhail Buyanovsky, and subsequently completed the opera and symphonic conducting department in the class of Professor Ilya Musin.
Fedotov made his opera debut in 1963 with Carmen at the S. M. Kirov Leningrad State Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet, now the Mariinsky Theatre. He remained associated with the theatre for the rest of his life, for about thirty-nine years. From 1964 he toured internationally with its company, appearing in the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, Austria, Germany, Spain, South Korea, Japan, and Scandinavia. Beginning in 1966, he appeared regularly at London’s Covent Garden.
In 1967 he was music director for Eugene Onegin with the Dresden Staatskapelle. He later collaborated with the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra and staged Swan Lake and Romeo and Juliet at the Semper Opera House. His repertoire comprised more than sixty operas and ballets. At the Mariinsky, he conducted premieres of Ivan Susanin, The Tsar’s Bride, and Boris Godunov, the latter presented for the first time in Mussorgsky’s original authorial version.
Among Mariinsky productions for which he served as music director were the ballets The Creation of the World by Andrei Petrov, Hamlet by Nikolai Chervinsky, Left-Hander by Boris Alexandrov, Angara by Andrei Eshpai, The Peasant and the Devil by Vladimir Kladnitsky, Cinderella by Sergei Prokofiev, Notre Dame Cathedral by Maurice Jarre, Pathetique Oratorio by Georgy Sviridov, and Leningrad Symphony by Dmitri Shostakovich. He also conducted the Leningrad Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra for the music of more than thirty films made at the Lenfilm studio, including Wedding in Malinovka, Farewell to St. Petersburg, The Green Carriage, The Snow Maiden, Silver Strings, The Snow Queen, Farewell Debut, Swan Lake, and Forest Tale.
For more than thirty years, Fedotov worked with the St. Petersburg Shostakovich Philharmonia and its orchestras, as well as with St. Petersburg choral ensembles, opera soloists, and composers, making compact-disc and video recordings. As a symphonic conductor, he toured with the Covent Garden Orchestra, the Gran Teatre del Liceu Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Bratislava Philharmonic, and the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, among others. From 1972 he taught opera and symphonic conducting at the Rimsky-Korsakov St. Petersburg Conservatory and gave master classes; many of his graduates went on to lead symphony orchestras and opera houses internationally.
Alongside his Mariinsky work, Fedotov served as principal guest conductor at the Royal Swedish Opera from 1994, Covent Garden and the Paris Grand Opera from 1995, and the New National Opera in Tokyo from 1996. In 1998 he received the United Kingdom’s Evening Standard award for outstanding achievement in musical theatre. He died in St. Petersburg and was buried at the Writers’ Walk of the Volkovo Cemetery. An asteroid was named in his memory.