By awarding the Mozart Prize 2021, the Sächsische Mozart-Gesellschaft e. V. honors the commitment of the orchestra and its conductor Oksana Lyniv to the musical work and activities surrounding Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his son Franz Xaver Mozart, whose 130th birthday is celebrated this year.
In addition, the Mozart Society honors the commitment to the Mozart Festival LvivMozArt, the international charisma and the European dialogue through the power of music. Exemplarily this commitment is shown in the cooperation with the Saxon Mozart Festival. The prize was presented at the concert on October 20 in St. Mark’s Church.
Oksana Lyniv was the first woman ever to conduct at the Bayreuth Festival in 2021. There she conducted the premiere of the Wagner opera “Der fliegende Holländer”. And now she is also the first woman at the head of an Italian Opera and Symphony Foundation, after she accepted the position of Music Director of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna.
Born in Brody, Ukraine, she studied conducting at the Carl Maria von Weber Academy of Music in Dresden and elsewhere. From 2008 to 2013, she was deputy chief conductor at the Odessa National Academic Theater. As a conductor, she has led opera performances at the Estonian National Opera and the Bonn Opera, among others. From 2013 to 2017, she was engaged at the Bavarian State Opera as assistant to General Music Director Kirill Petrenko. In 2015 she made her debut at Kungliga Operan in Stockholm with Der Nussknacker, followed by further debuts at Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona (Der fliegende Holländer), among others. From 2017 to 2020 she was chief conductor of the Graz Opera, further engagements took her to the Stuttgart State Opera, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, the Theater an der Wien as well as to numerous international appearances such as at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam.