Inspired by opera

Eder, the manager of the Krushelnytska Lviv National Opera and Ballet, celebrated the anniversary on February 17. Managers of European and Ukrainian opera houses, heads of music academies and world famous opera singers came to congratulate him. His own company greeted him with a several-hours-long show called Inspired by Opera and involving opera and ballet soloists, chorus and symphony orchestra. The Day learned also that President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych marked the date by awarding Order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise, the 4th Grade to Eder “for personal contributions to the development of the national theater, many years of fruitful work and professional excellence.”

Let us recall that Eder has attracted attention of the public and artistic community primarily by his creative projects, including, in particular, commissioning Myroslav Skoryk to compose opera Moses and ballet The Return of Butterfly and then staging both works in Lviv. It comes also to mind that Eder was the initiator of the Lviv Opera and Ballet’s acceding, as the first ever company from the Commonwealth of Independent States, to the Opera Europa International Association which brings together leading Western Europe opera houses. Undoubtedly, he deserves great praise, too, for keeping his opera’s building in perfect order, unlike other theaters of the city!

“As a musicologist, I am keenly interested in our opera’s history,” professor of the Lysenko Lviv National Music Academy Liubov Kyianovska says. “This company was lucky to have Tadeusz Pawlikowski, an enterprising and artistic person, prominent stage director and impresario, as its manager more than a century ago. Ludwig Heller, a brilliant entrepreneur who followed Pawlikowski, was able to attract a lot of investors to the opera and continue churning out new productions. In my opinion, Eder combines features of both his great predecessors, serving as an example of the spiral-like dialectical development, with a figure reappearing at some point who accumulates a lot of new ideas and is full of energy. He is a creative figure.”

“Eder stands out due to his charisma, peculiar worldview, and inimitable artistic style, while his age is no obstacle,” chief manager of the Zankovetska National Academic Drama Theater Andrii Matsiak says. “We, of the younger generations, are perhaps more pragmatic and calm. I am sure that we will be amazed by his creative ‘somersaults’ and impressed by his interesting designs for many years to come. He is unusual, some of his designs are strange, but he is inimitable!”

“Eder is responsible for the opera’s current name as the Krushelnytska Opera and the decision to decorate its Mirror Hall with busts of the company’s past epochs’ star singers Solomia Krushelnytska, Modest Menzinsky, Oleksandr Myshuha, Yaroslav Voshchak, set designer Yevhen Lysyk, and Pope John Paul II, who blessed Moses’s creators,” the Lviv National Opera and Ballet’s chief information officer Nadia Trush reminds. “It was Eder, too, who initiated installation of Krushelnytska’s sculptural portrait in Milan’s La Scala, while our opera has become a national institution during his tenure as manager.”

“The Lviv Music Academy and the Lviv Opera are closely related, since almost 95 percent of the opera’s employees are graduates of our academy! Moreover, Eder is our honorary professor, and deservedly so, because he is actively involved in the professional training and education, providing career openings and opportunities for further professional advances to our graduates,” rector of the Lysenko Lviv National Music Academy Ihor Pylatiuk stresses. “He is a wonderful example of a modern manager who understands the market, knows its specific needs and strives to meet them. The Lviv Opera has occupied a prominent place in the European context recently.”