Yevgeny Alekseyevich Akulov was a Soviet conductor and teacher. He was born on August 20, 1905, in Smorgon, Vilna Governorate, and died on October 5, 1996, in Moscow. In 1995 he was named People's Artist of Russia; earlier, in 1940, he had been awarded the title Honored Artist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.
Akulov studied at the Gnessin Music Technical School, where he trained in piano with Yelena Gnesina and studied composition with Mikhail Gnesin and Reinhold Gliere. In 1931 he graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in conducting, having studied with Konstantin Saradzhev.
In 1930 he became an assistant conductor and then a conductor at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. From 1937 to 1938 he served as chief conductor of the Belarusian Opera and Ballet Theatre in Minsk. From 1938 to 1949 he worked as chief conductor and head of the musical department of the V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theatre, which from 1941 was known as the Moscow Academic Musical Theatre named after K. S. Stanislavsky and Vl. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko.
Alongside his conducting career, Akulov was active as a pedagogue. From 1946 to 1955 he led the opera and orchestral classes at the Gnessin Musical-Pedagogical Institute. From 1950 he conducted radio orchestras. Between 1962 and 1964 he was artistic director of an opera-symphonic orchestra. From 1950 he also taught at GITIS, where he introduced and taught a special new course, “Analysis of Musical Dramaturgy,” for directors of musical theaters; from 1960 he held the rank of professor. From 1952 to 1964 he was conductor and leader of the trainee group at the Bolshoi Theatre.
His work in the theater included productions of operas and stage works such as Jacques Offenbach's The Blind (1938) and The Poet's Love (The Tales of Hoffmann, 1948), Tikhon Khrennikov's Into the Storm (1939), L. A. Khodzha-Eynatov's The Family (1940), the concert-performance Heroes of the Russian People (1941), César Cui's Mademoiselle Fifi (1942), Boris Mokrousov's Chapaev (1942), Johann Strauss's The Gypsy Baron (1942), Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's Mozart and Salieri and Kashchey the Immortal (both 1944), Giuseppe Verdi's The Battle of Legnano (1962), Rimsky-Korsakov's The Golden Cockerel (1962), Joseph Haydn's Orpheus (1964), A. A. Babayev's The Eagle Fortress (1964), and Vissarion Shebalin's Sun over the Steppe (1965).
Akulov also published writings on opera and musical theater. His books include Opera Music and Stage Action (1978), later reissued in 2016, and Three Borises (1997). He was buried at Troyekurovskoye Cemetery in Moscow.