American conductor Gavriel Heine has been a fixture at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, Russia for 15 years. He led hundreds of performances of such classics as “Swan Lake” and “The Rite of Spring.” And he did so as a protégé of the leader of the company: Valery Gergiev.
On Saturday, Mr. Heine went to the Mariinsky again, but not for an evening on stage. He was there to inform Mr. Gergiev – a longtime friend and supporter of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia – that he was resigning as one of the house conductors of the state-run theater. Mr. Heine gathered his belongings, including a pair of white bow ties and scores for “La Bohème” and “The Turn of the Screw”, and got ready to leave the country.
Mr Heine, 47, was increasingly troubled by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “I can never deny what is happening in Ukraine,” he said in a series of interviews over the past week. “Russia is not a place where I want to raise my son. It’s not a place I want my wife to be anymore. It’s not a place I want to be anymore.”
His resignation comes as the war continues to rock the performing arts. Cultural institutions in Europe and North America, which promise not to hire artists who support Mr Putin, have cut ties with some artists, especially Mr Gergiev, as well as with orchestras, theaters and ballet companies. Many artists, citing the invasion, canceled performances in Russia.
Mr. Gergiev, the theater’s general and artistic director, was once one of the world’s busiest conductors, but his international career has collapsed. For example, Carnegie Hall canceled two concerts by the Mariinsky Orchestra under his direction that were scheduled for May after he was canceled from a series of performances by the Vienna Philharmonic in February. He has returned to St. Petersburg in recent weeks to focus on that company and its domestic cultural empire, which includes several stages, thousands of employees and tens of millions of dollars in state funding.
Mr. Heine found Mr. Gergiev at the Mariinsky on Saturday, where he conducted rehearsals and performances of Wagner’s “Götterdämmerung” and Verdi’s “Attila”. He described repeatedly trying to get hold of his mentor backstage to notify him of his firing, eventually cornering him in an elevator.
It was a quick conversation: five minutes as Mr. Gergiev rushed to a meeting. Mr Heine said Mr Gergiev seemed surprised but accepted his decision.
“He was very nice to me,” said Mr. Heine. “He gave me a handshake and a hug and wished me well. And of course I thanked him for giving me such a huge opportunity so early in my career.”
The two conductors also spoke about the recent tensions between Russia and the West. Mr Gergiev — who was fired from assignments in the United States and Europe, as well as from the stage of the Munich Philharmonic, for his refusal to publicly condemn the war — defended his decision, saying he was not a child, Mr Gergiev. remembers Heine.
De Mariinsky declined to comment Monday, saying it could not yet confirm Mr Heine’s resignation. However, the company removed Mr Heine’s biography from its website on Monday evening.
Mr. Heine’s departure from Mariinsky is an unexpected conclusion to his three-decade career in Russia, where he studied with renowned teachers and rose to become a conductor at one of the country’s most prestigious houses. And his departure is another blow to Russian cultural institutions, which are grappling with boycotts and cancellations by foreign groups as the country’s arts increasingly turn inward under Mr Putin. Mr Gergiev remains a critical figure in Mr Putin’s campaign. Mr Putin asked Mr Gergiev at a televised meeting last month if he was interested in the idea of uniting the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow with the Mariinsky, a scheme that would take Russia back to the days of the Tsars.
“Russia will only become more and more closed,” said Simon Morrison, a music professor at Princeton University. “It will return more and more to its own true self, however harsh that may seem – a closed-off, angry, paranoid and hateful feudal empire.”
Growing up in Cherry Hill, NJ, Heine became interested in Russian culture as a teenager. He accompanied his mother, a pianist, to a performance in Moscow and took cello lessons with a professor at the Moscow Conservatory.
After high school, he returned to Russia for language and culture studies. In 1998, he became one of the first American graduates of the Moscow Conservatory, after which he began studying with the eminent Russian conductor Ilya Musin, who was also Mr. Gergiev taught.
His breakthrough came in 2007, when Mr. heine mr. Gergiev approached during a rehearsal in Philadelphia and asked if the Mariinsky had any openings. Mr. Heine was invited later that year to make his theater debut with Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro”, and soon began conducting regular performances there. In 2009 he was appointed principal conductor.
During his time with the Mariinsky, Mr. Heine took the stage for more than 850 performances and watched the company grow in power and size under Mr. Gergiev. The arts and the state, Mr. Heine said he understood, were inexorably linked in Russia. He was at the theater twice when Mr. Putin, the main benefactor of the house, performed for award ceremonies and other events.
“I just assumed culture is a priority for this government, for whatever reason,” he said. “And they feel very strongly about it, and that’s the relationship.”
He acknowledged that Gergiev sometimes used art for political purposes, such as when he led a patriotic concert in the Syrian city of Palmyra in 2016, shortly after Russian airstrikes helped drive the Islamic State out of the city.
Still, Mr Heine said, Gergiev’s long association with Putin didn’t bother him. The two have known each other since the early 1990s, when Mr. Putin was a civil servant in St. Petersburg and Mr. Gergiev began his tenure at the Mariinsky, then called the Kirov Theater.
“I never felt like we were in the service of the state,” said Mr Heine. “It seemed like the state trusted Gergiev for his artistic priorities, and he convinced them that his priorities were good priorities, and they funded that†
The invasion of Ukraine changed his view of Russia and his place in it. He had a personal connection with Ukraine, where he was chief conductor of the Kharkov Symphony Orchestra from 2003 to 2007. When he saw images of Russian missiles hitting a building in Kharkov in early March, he was distraught.
“That broke me,” he said. “I saw the faces of all the musicians I had worked with. I thought of my orchestra leader who lives two blocks behind that building. I mean, that’s his neighborhood. I just lost it. I couldn’t do anything that day and I thought that was about it.”
He decided to leave his position, in part because he was concerned for the safety of his wife and 11-year-old son. His family left for the United States in early March, while he went to Switzerland to direct a production of Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin” at the Opéra de Lausanne.
He returned to St. Petersburg last week and spent several days packing his apartment and saying goodbye to colleagues over a meal at his favorite Italian restaurant near the Mariinsky, where a pizza is named after him. He submitted his letter of resignation to the company on Sunday and returned the keys to his locker.
He arrived in London on Monday, where he will direct a production of “Swan Lake” at the Royal Opera House next month.
He said it was difficult for him to leave Russia, where he spent about half of his life. He considers himself Russian from a cultural perspective, although he remains an American citizen.
Still, Mr. Heine has made peace with moving on. “The sad thing wasn’t that I walked into the theater; the sad part was the disappointment and sadness of the people I had to tell that I was leaving,” he said.
“The theater isn’t going anywhere,” he added. “I’m.”