Vitaly Polonsky

Chief Choirmaster of the musicAeterna Choir

A graduate of the Glinka Novosibirsk State Conservatory, he has been collaborating with conductor Teodor Currentzis since 2003.

In 2011, he assumed the position of the Chief Choirmaster of the musicAeterna Choir, which performed for the first time at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in 2015, at the RUHRtriennale Festival in Bochum in 2016, has participated annually in the Salzburg Festival since 2017, and won the international Opera Awards in 2018.

Vitaly Polonsky works with a repertoire that includes music of different styles and epochs — works by Baroque composers, masterpieces of Russian choral music of the 18th–20th centuries, as well as opera repertoire and works by contemporary authors.

He has collaborated with such stage directors as Peter Sellars, Robert Wilson, and Romeo Castellucci. Vitaly Polonsky acted as a choirmaster in the production of the following operas: Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro (2012, co-production of the Baden-Baden Festspielhaus and Perm Opera); Purcell’s The Indian Queen (2013, co-production of the Teatro Real, Madrid, English National Opera, London, and Perm Opera); Verdi’s La Traviata (2016, co-production with Unlimited Performing Arts, Denmark, Landestheater, Linz, Austria, and Théâtre de la Ville, Luxembourg, and Perm Opera); Philippe Hersant’s Tristia (2016, world premiere); Puccini’s La Bohème (2017, co-production of the Baden-Baden Festspielhaus and Perm Opera); Lully’s Phaëton (co-production of the Royal Opera of Versailles and Perm Opera in collaboration with the ensemble Le Poème Harmonique); and Honegger’s Joan of Arc at the Stake (2018, co-production of the Lyon National Opera, La Monnaie/De Munt Theatre, Basel Theatre, and Perm Opera).
At the Salzburg Festival, as a choirmaster, he participated in the productions including Mozart’s Idomeneo, The Mercy of Titus and Don Giovanni, Purcell’s The Indian Queen, Duke Bluebeard’s Castle by Bartok, De temporum fine comoedia by Orff, as well as concert performances of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, Mozart’s Mass in C Minor and The St Matthew Passion by Bach.
At the Diaghilev Festival in Perm, he worked as a choirmaster on such performances as Orff’s De temporum fine comoedia (2022), Stravinsky’s Persephone and The Symphony of Psalms (2023), and other major projects. Since 2024, he has been supervising the Diaghilev Festival Youth Festival Choir.

As a conductor, Vitaly Polonsky gives regular concerts with the musicAeterna Choir and its chamber casts at the Hermitage and other museums, as well as other major concert venues in Saint Petersburg and Moscow.