A new personnel appointment was confirmed in the administration of the Hvorostovsky Krasnoyarsk Opera and Ballet Theatre.

Irina Lychagina accepted two appointments as Artistic Director of the opera company and Principal Director of the Hvorostovsky Krasnoyarsk Opera and Ballet Theatre on April 14, 2023. The Theatre’s team knows her from her collaboration with the Dmitri Hvorostovsky Festival: Irina Vladimirovna was assistant director of the production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera Don Giovanni (the main opera event of the Festival) and director of concerts of the Theatre’s soloists and guest stars.

Managing Director of the Theatre Svetlana Guziy introduced the new employee to the opera company expressing her hope for mutual understanding and fruitful and effective work.

Irina Lychagina had been director of the opera company of the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Academic Music Theatre for more than twenty years. She is the plastique director and choreographer of such iconic performances for the Theatre as Madama Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini (the production won the Golden Mask award), Betrothal in a Monastery by Sergei Prokofiev, Eugene Onegin by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, May Night by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov; she conceived the plastique elements for the world premiere of Vladimir Kobekin's opera Hamlet / Danish / / Russian / Comedy (nominated in five categories for the Golden Mask). Irina Lychagina's remarkable talent is her directing the crowd scenes. Thanks to her, 350 people who simultaneously took the stage in the production of War and Peace all were clock-work.

Irina Vladimirovna is an indispensable assistant to all invited foreign directors. She has assisted to Olivier Py (Pelléas et Mélisande by Claude Debussy), Christopher Alden (A Midsummer Night's Dream by Benjamin Britten), Andrejs Žagars (Tannhäuser by Richard Wagner, Manon by Jules Massenet), Peter Stein (Aida by Giuseppe Verdi, La Damnation de Faust by Hector Berlioz at the Bolshoi Theatre of Russia). In 2019, Irina Lychagina took part in staging the Igor Stravinsky's opera The Rake's Progress (joint production of the MAMT (Stanislavsky and

Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Academic Music Theatre) and the Festival in Aix-en-Provence). The same year she restored the Massenet's opera Manon.

At the MAMT, Irina Lychagina staged the Dmitri Shostakovich's operetta Moscow, Cheryomushki (2006, two nominations for the Golden Mask), Christoph Willibald Gluck's opera Orpheus and Eurydice (2014), educational productions Introduction to an Orchestra and Guide to an Orchestra, as well as concert programmes.

We must add that People's Artist of Russia Larisa Marzoeva who had headed the opera company since 2016 didn’t leave her service in the Krasnoyarsk Opera and Ballet Theatre: being not only a singer but also a teacher she’ll share her vocal experience with the Theatre’s soloists.