Kirill Serebrennikov
Kirill Serebrennikov was born in Rostov-on-Don and graduated in physics in 1992. During his studies he began working as a self-taught theatre, opera, film and television director and costume designer.
Salome at the Stuttgart Opera and Il Barbiere di Siviglia at the Komische Oper Berlin were Kirill Serebrennikov’s first highly acclaimed works to be presented to audiences outside Russia.
Together with Teodor Currentzis, Kirill Serebrennikov worked on Mysterion (after Carl Orff’s De Temporum Fine Comedia) and the benefit project Requiem (by Alexei Sioumak), for which he was also responsible as author. Other opera productions include Falstaff at the Mariinsky Theatre St. Petersburg, Le coq d’or at the Bolshoi Moscow and American Lulu at the Vienna Festival.
His interpretation of Cosi fan tutte at Zurich Opera in autumn 2018 was hailed as a sensational success, as was his Nabucco production at Hamburg State Opera in spring 2019 and his Il Barbiere di Siviglia production at Theater Basel in autumn 2019. In March 2020, Kirill Serebrennikov made his debut in Germany with his first drama, directing his adaptation of Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decamerone at Deutsches Theater Berlin. His interpretation of Parsifal in a new production at the Vienna State Opera in April 2021 was also celebrated by audiences and the media. Further successes were Die Nase at the Bavarian State Opera in autumn 2021 and Der Freischütz at De Nederlandse Opera Amsterdam in June 2022.
At the Komische Oper Berlin, he will direct the Mozart Da Ponte cycle for the next three years.
For his film work such as The Student, Kirill Serebrennikov was awarded at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival. Other films such as The Swallow, Mysteries of the Storm, Playing the Victim, The Diary of a Murderer were screened at the Rome, Locarno and Venice Film Festivals and nominated for the Golden Lion and the Grand Prix of Kinotavr in Sochi.
Kirill Serebrennikov has not only brought numerous classics of Russian literature to the stage, but also works from Shakespeare and Brecht to the Irish playwright Martin McDonagh. His production Plastilin by Vasily Sigarev was recorded by arte and invited to numerous European theatre festivals.
In 2011 he founded an experimental workshop project “Platform” in Moscow.
As Artistic Director of Studio Seven, a collective of young artists, he staged A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Carroll’s The Hunting of the Schnark, among others. Studio Seven became part of the Gogol Center’s artistic director Kirill Serebrennikov from 2012 to 2021.
The Gogol Center in Moscow is a cross-genre theatre laboratory and a solitaire in the Russian cultural landscape. His productions here include Dead Souls by Gogol, a musical adaptation by Duncan Sheik based on Spring Awakening by Frank Wedekind, and Machine Müller, based on Heiner Müller’s Hamlet Machine in collaboration with the Goethe Institute.
Kirill Serebrennikov was awarded the Golden Mask in April 2019 for his production of the ballet Nureyev at the Bolshoi Theatre and for his production of Pushkin’s Little Tragedies at the Gogol Center.