Yakov Strizhak

Yakov Strizhak was born in Petropavlovsk, Kazakhstan and studied at the St Petersburg State Conservatory graduating in 2010. He won first prize at both the Rachmaninov International Music Competition (2008) and the “St Petersburg Spring” Festival Competition (2010).

He has performed under conductors including Valery Gergiev, Mariss Jansons, Frederic Chaslin, Sergei Stadler and Andrey Petrenko. In 2007 he took part in first performances of Shostakovich’s The Tale of the Priest and His Workman Balda in Norway and Ireland, and the following year he sang in the premiere of Smelkov’s opera The Brothers Karamazov conducted by Valery Gergiev at the Gergiev Philharmonic Festival in Rotterdam. In 2021 he sang Rocco in the Hermitage Theatre’s new production of Fidelio. The same year he made his stage debut at the Mariinsky Theatre as Nilakantha in Delibes’ Lakmé, where he has since sung Zaccaria Nabucco, Sir George Walton I Puritani, Don Magnifico La Cenerentola, title role Don Pasquale, Mustafà L’Italiana in Algeri, Marcel Les Huguenots (also at the Bolshoi Theatre), and the title role in Bartok’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle.

He has also performed Zuniga Carmen under Mariss Jansons (Rimsky-Korsakov Theatre of Opera and Ballet), and as a soloist at the St Petersburg ‘Zazerkalie’ Theatre he has sung Don Alfonso Così fan tutte, Don Basilio, Le Commendatore Don Giovanni, Mustafà L’italiana in Algeri, Geronimo Il matrimonio segreto, Lindorf, Coppélius, Dr Miracle and Dapertutto Les Contes d’Hoffmann, King René Iolanthe, Prince Gremin Eugene Onegin, Vasily Sobakin The Tsar’s Bride, Sparafucile Rigoletto, Colline La Bohème, Rocco Fidelio and Angelotti Tosca.

Outside Russia he has sung Zaretsky Eugene Onegin, Barnabas Das Kaisers neue Kleider, Barker in Gershwin’s Blue Monday and Pluto Orpheus (Komische Oper Berlin) and Beethoven Missa Solemnis, Mozart Requiem (New Israeli Opera). In 2018 he made his US debut at the Bard Summerscape Festival performing Malyuta Skuratov in Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tsar’s Bride and the Old Servant in Rubenstein’s The Demon.