Vyacheslav Okunev

principal stage designer of the Mikhailovsky Theatre

Vyacheslav Okunev graduated from the Leningrad State Institution for Performing Arts, Music and Cinema. When a student, he was already involved in creating stage designs for the productions of the Mariinsky and Mikhailovsky Theatres. Since 1975, he has designed more than 300 performances.
For the Mariinsky Theatre, he has designed: Prokofiev’s Love for Three Oranges, Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, Delibes’s Coppélia, Adam’s Giselle, Stravinsky’s Mavra, Les Noces, and Petrushka, Schedrin’s Anna Karenina, Alexander Tchaikovsky’s Government Inspector, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Kashchey the Deathless; for the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow: Levenskiold’s La Sylphide, Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina and the ballet Russian Hamlet by Boris Eifman; for the St Petersburg Chamber Opera: Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, Puccini’s Tosca, Gianni Schicchi, and Suor Angelica; he has also collaborated with the Boris Eifman Ballet.
For the Mikhailovsky Theatre, he has designed Bizet’s Carmen, Verdi’s La traviata, Othello, Rigoletto, and Requiem, Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi and Tosca, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, Gounod’s Faust, Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin and Iolanta, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Tsar’s Bride and Tale of Tsar Saltan, and many other operas, as well as Le Corsaire, Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, and Nutcracker, Adam’s Giselle, Minkus’s La Bayadère and Don Quixote, Glazunov’s Raymonda, Hérold’s La fille mal gardée, Khachaturian’s Spartacus, and many other ballet. He has also revived stage designs by Simon Virsaladze, Vadim Ryndin, Sergey Solomko, and Vladimir Dmitriev for the ballets Swan Lake, Laurencia, La Sylphide, and The Flames of Paris correspondingly, staged at the Mikhailovsky Theatre by Mikhail Messerer.
Vyacheslav Okunev has cooperated with the Glasgow Royal Theatre, National Theatre of Greece, Grand Theatre in Warsaw, Hungarian National Theatre, National Theatres of Seoul and Tokyo, New York City Ballet, Cagliari Opera, and other theatres. The productions designed by Vyacheslav Okunev were presented at La Scala, Arena di Verona, and other venues.