Alexander Titel is an outstanding figure in contemporary Russian theater. Since 1991, he leads the opera troupe of the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Academic Musical Theater. Under his leadership and direct participation in the theater, more than twenty opera performances were staged, each of which clearly shows a new modern interpretation and original interpretation of Alexander Titel.
Biography. Childhood and youth
Alexander Borisovich (Borukhovich) Titel (emphasis is placed on the second syllable) was born on November 30, 1949 in the Uzbek city of Tashkent, and his childhood and youth passed here. The story of the family of Alexander Titel is incredibly interesting: his parents are from Odessa: father Boris Titel was a famous violinist, a student of the famous Peter Stolyarsky, and his mother worked as a TB doctor. Their wedding took place on the day of the beginning of World War II - June 22, 1941.
The Nazis already bombed Odessa, an urgent evacuation began; The Titel family was supposed to leave the city on a ship, but, fortunately, they were late for its departure - the ship was destroyed by enemy aircraft when leaving the port. Later, the couple left Odessa by train, and on the way at some station they crossed with the train in which the Leningrad Conservatory was going to evacuate, and the rector Pavel Serebryakov, who knew Boris Titel, suggested they go to Tashkent with them. So the future parents of Alexander Titel were in Uzbekistan. Soon Boris Titel refused the reservation and volunteered for the front, where over time he even organized his own ensemble.
Son Alexander appeared in the Titel family in the postwar years. He studied well, studied in the music school in the violin class, but once he got tired of it, and he gave up music classes, preferring to play football. In addition, already in his childhood he was fascinated by the art of the theater: at first he simply attended all opera and ballet performances, then he became a member of the mimance - theatrical crowd: he wore banners in the opera Boris Godunov, smeared himself with other teenagers and portrayed an Ethiopian prisoner in the opera Aida, and the opera Carmen was even a member of the children's choir. For work in the mimicry, Titel earned money, which, according to him, was enough for ice cream and trips with girls to the movies.
After the 8th grade, Alexander decided to transfer to a physics and mathematics school - he was very attracted to exact sciences, he repeatedly became the winner of various olympiads. After graduating from high school with honors, he became a student at the Energy Department of the Tashkent Polytechnic Institute, who graduated in 1972 with a degree in electrical engineer. However, in his student years, Titel was more interested in not playing, but playing in KVN, in STEM and in the theater. Listening to the next opera, the young man felt that musical performance is often much stronger than the staged part of the play. And after reading the book by Mikhail Chudnovsky, “The Director puts on the opera” about Boris Pokrovsky, the famous main director of the Bolshoi Theater, he finally realized what he would like to do in life: opera directing. Having abandoned everything, Alexander Titel went to Moscow to enter GITIS.
Creativity and theatrical career
From the first time, Alexander Titel did not enter GITIS and returned to Tashkent, worked for a year at the Tashkent Conservatory Opera Studio as an assistant director, and also led the theater circle. The following year, the young man still got to the directing department of GITIS, to the course of the outstanding director and teacher Lev Dmitrievich Mikhailov.
In 1980, Titel graduated from the Theater Institute and, on the advice and recommendation of Mikhailov, left for Sverdlovsk, becoming the Director of the Opera and Ballet Theater. Here he worked for 11 years, staging a variety of opera performances and making a truly revolutionary breakthrough in opera directing. The main creative principle of Titel was the simplicity and even some symbolic primitiveness of the scenery with careful study and detail of the acting, the introduction of elements of modern life into opera stories created many years ago. In addition to Titel, a young innovative team of creative people gathered at the Sverdlovsk Theater: conductor Evgeny Brazhnik, artists Ernst Heidebrecht and Yuri Ustinov. Each performance became a vivid event in the theatrical life of not only the city, but the whole country. The first performance that Teeter staged in Sverdlovsk was the opera The Barber of Seville by Rossini, followed by Tale of Tsar Saltan by Rimsky-Korsakov, Boris Godunov by Mussorgsky, Katerina Izmailova Shostakovich and other performances. The theater went on tour to Moscow and other cities of the USSR, in addition, Alexander Titel collaborated with the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow - for example, in 1986 he put on Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera “The Night Before Christmas”.
And in 1991, Alexander Titel was invited to the Moscow Academic Theater named after Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko and was appointed chief director and artistic director of his opera company. This appointment was preceded by a conflict between the main conductor of the theater Evgeny Vladimirovich Kolobov and the artists of the opera company. Kolobov left, taking with him some soloists, an orchestra and a choir, and created the New Opera theater. The remaining musicians of the theater of Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko appealed to Titel with the request to head the opera company, and the director proudly and joyfully agreed. Titel was very warm about this theater, if only because its instructor for GITIS L. Mikhailov worked in it for 20 years.
Much had to be restored from scratch - to form a choir, orchestra, select soloists. And this was a great merit of Titel, as well as his colleagues and like-minded people - director Vladimir Urin, artist Vladimir Arefiev: three months after the theater’s “split”, performances were already playing on its stage - first with a phonogram, then accompanied by a newly created orchestra.
At first, Alexander Titel staged operas in the old way, not directing me and the scenery - it was important for him to take a closer look at the artists, to understand what can be learned from each of them. And only after a year and a half did he stage Glinka's opera Ruslan and Lyudmila. Over the years of the theater’s leadership, and this is already almost 30 years old, Titel staged 23 plays - the golden opera classic: The Golden Cockerel and The Tale of Tsar Saltan by Rimsky-Korsakov, La Traviata Verdi, Carmen Bizet, and the operetta Flying mouse "Johann Strauss, " Eugene Onegin "and" Queen of Spades "by Tchaikovsky, " War and Peace "by Prokofiev and many others. Each performance is literally filled with modern creative finds and experiments, which causes both admiration and rejection among the audience and theater critics. But in any case, the interest in the performances staged by Alexander Titel is incredibly high. The opera company often goes on tour both in Russia and in foreign countries. Over the years, the theater survived two fires, but invariably restored and revived.
Alexander Titel also manages to collaborate with other theaters - he staged performances in the Bolshoi, in Yekaterinburg theaters, as well as on opera stages abroad (in Turkey, Germany, France). In total, he staged about 50 operas. His performances were awarded the Golden Mask National Theater Award four times - in 1997, 2007, 2010 and 2016, the nomination "Best Director's Work". In 1991, Titel was awarded the title of Honored Worker of the RSFSR, and in 1999 - People's Artist of Russia. More recently, in April 2019, Alexander Titel was awarded the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, IV degree - as the state appreciated his "contribution to the development of national culture and art."
Educational activities
In addition to working in the theater, Alexander Titel also teaches acting and directing at GITIS (RATI). In collaboration with Igor Yasulovich, a famous actor and director, Titel created a creative workshop in the university at the Faculty of Musical Theater, where talented young people not only learn from eminent masters, but also participate in full-fledged productions of operas - such as, for example, “Figaro’s Wedding” and "The Magic Flute" by Mozart. These operas are periodically included in the repertoire of the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Theater.
