Anna Skryleva

Anna Skryleva is currently the General Music Director at Magdeburg Theatre in Germany, passionately dedicated to expanding the current orchestral, ballet, and operatic repertoire. Her rediscovery and world premiere of Eugene Engel’s opera “Grete Minde” in 2022 garnered international acclaim and is considered a significant find of the century. In recognition of her tireless efforts, she received the special “Innovative Orchestra 2019” award from the German Orchestra Foundation.

Skryleva’s career as a conductor has followed the traditional path of a general music director: from solo pianist to positions as a repetiteur, assistant, and conductor. Her mentors include Simone Young and Julia Jones, as well as training at the Institute for Women Conductors at the Dallas Opera (USA).

She regularly works as a guest conductor at renowned opera houses and with outstanding orchestras, including the Hamburg State Opera, Royal Swedish Opera, Dallas Opera, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Copenhagen Phil, and Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. In the 2024/2025 season, she is working on two new productions at the Leipzig Opera: Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet and Tchaikovsky’s Pique Dame. Her versatile repertoire spans the Viennese classical era of Mozart and Beethoven, German and Russian Romanticism from Tchaikovsky to Wagner and Strauss, as well as the Italian bel canto and verismo of Rossini, Verdi, and Puccini. She also pays special attention to 20th-century music, focusing on Britten, Shostakovich, and Prokofiev, and contemporary music. Working closely with composers like Lera Auerbach, Konstantia Gourzi, and Elena Kats-Chernin, Skryleva continues to create groundbreaking projects; in 2025, she will perform at the Ultraschall Festival with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin.

As the composer Anna’s works are published by Universal Edition Vienna. She has created several opera and orchestral arrangements for theatres in Magdeburg and Winterthur, including Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito and Wagner’s prelude to Lohengrin. In 2023, she premiered Lullaby for two voices and orchestra in Magdeburg. In 2024, two more premieres are scheduled: 3 Impromptus in C in an orchestral version with the Augsburg Philharmonic Orchestra and Mirror for soprano and orchestra with the Magdeburg Philharmonic Orchestra. Mirror is based on the Solresol language, where each musical motif corresponds to a specific word. The work is inspired by a poem Skryleva wrote in 2021, with the music being shaped and triggered by the words.

Beyond her musical endeavours, Skryleva is also committed to societal causes. In 2014, she founded the international peace initiative CLASSIC FOR PEACE (CFP), aiming to promote international understanding through classical music.