Peter Feranec
Peter Feranec was born in Bratislava. When he was 16, he decided to be a musician. He studied choral conducting at the Bratislava Academy of Music and applied the knowledge he had acquired there in the Bratislava Children's Choir. In 1985, he received a scholarship from the Ministry of Culture of the RSFSR and continued his studies with the outstanding master Mariss Jansons (1943–2019) at the Rimsky-Korsakov Leningrad State Conservatory.
After the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia in 1989, he went to Austria to study under Karl Esterreicher. Mister Feranec collaborated with the Vienna Chamber Opera: the success of the production of Mozart's opera Le Nozze di Figaro in 1993 (the rising star of the Bolshoi Theatre Marina Meshcheryakova performed the part of Susanna in it) preceded an invitation to the Bolshoi Theatre of Russia he received later. “My phone rang one Sunday morning. Half-awake, I picked up the phone and thought that it was a kind of prank. I was asked if I wanted to be the chief conductor of the Bolshoi Theatre. I angrily hung up.” told Feranec.
In 1995, Artistic Director and the head of the Bolshoi Theatre of Russia, the legendary dancer Vladimir Vasiliev invited the musician to stage Le Nozze di Figaro; after its premiere, he offered Peter the post of Chief Conductor. Maestro Feranec agreed and became the youngest conductor in the history of the Bolshoi to receive this post. He conducted the new productions of La Bohème by Giacomo Puccini, La Traviata and Aida by Giuseppe Verdi, The Love for Three Oranges by Sergei Prokofiev. He also undertook three successful theatre orchestra tours in the United States and Europe and twice toured with an opera troupe in Japan and Austria.
Peter Feranec has performed with the Honoured Ensemble of the Republic, the Shostakovich Academic Symphony Orchestra of the St.Petersburg Philharmonic (1997-2000 - its Principal Guest Conductor), London Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, Lisbon Chamber Symphony Orchestra, Lisbon Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, and many chamber orchestras.
He conducted opera performances at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Cologne Opera, the Zurich Opera, the Prague National Theatre, the Théâtre du Capitole in Toulouse, the Mariinsky Theatre, The Komische Oper Berlin, the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, the National Opera of Norway. Between 2007 and 2009, Peter Feranec was Chief Conductor of the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2009, he conducted the opera productions of La Traviata, Eugene Onegin, and The Queen of Spades at the Mikhailovsky Theatre. Between 2009 and December 2011, he worked as Music Director and Chief Conductor of this theatre. He has staged the ballets Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, the operas Rusalka by Antonin Dvořák, La Juive by Fromental Halévy, Káťa Kabanová by Leoš Janáček, Un Ballo in Maschera by Verdi, and La Bohème by Puccini. Between 2015 and 2017, the maestro led the St. Petersburg State Academic Symphony Orchestra.
Since 2017, he has again collaborated with the Mikhailovsky Theatre as a guest maestro conducting Tchaikovsky's Iolanta, Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana, Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, and Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera.
In 2020, Peter Feranec took up the post of director of the Slovak Institute in Moscow.
