MIKAEL TARIVERDIEV - everybody in Russia knows the name. It is mostly known in conection with film music, especially with two cult films: Seventeen Moments of Spring and Fate’s Irony. But apart from music scores for 132 films Mikael Tariverdiev is the author of chamber vocal cycles, of four ballets, of four operas, of a number of pieces of organ and instrumental music.
Student of Aram Khachaturyan ( he graduated from Gnesin Institute, composition class, in 1957), he made his debut as composer when the famed chamber singer Zara Dolukhanova sang his vocal pieces at Moscow Conservatoire Big Hall. Boris Pokrovsky’s Chamber Music Theatre started its life with Mikael Tariverdiev’s opera Who Are You? His comic opera Count Cagliostro, first produced by this famous theatre in December 1983, has become a mainstay of its repertory and has been presented by the theatre in all its foreign tours.