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Kirill Petrenko is a Russian conductor.
The son of a violinist, Petrenko studied piano as a youth, and made his public debut as a pianist at age 11. At age 18, he and his family emigrated to Austria, where his father played in the Vorarlberg Symphony. Petrenko formally studied music at the Vorarlberger Landeskonservatorium in Feldkirch, Vorarlberg, graduating with honours in piano studies. He continued his musical studies in Vienna at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna, where his teachers included Uroš Lajovic. His other conducting teachers and mentors have included Myung-Whun Chung, Edward Downes, Péter Eötvös and Semyon Bychkov.
Petrenko made his conducting debut in opera in 1995 in Vorarlberg with a production of Benjamin Britten's Let's Make an Opera. He was a Kapellmeister at the Vienna Volksoper from 1997 to 1999. From 1999 to 2002, he was Generalmusikdirektor of the Südthüringisches Staatstheater, Das Meininger Theater, where his work included conducting the four operas of Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen in 2001 on four consecutive days, his first professional conducting engagement with the operas of Wagner.
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