Tchaikovsky
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Gennadii Kondrat'ev

Russian baritone (b. 1834; d. 1905), born Gennadii Petrovich Kondrat'ev (Геннадий Петрович Кондратьев, Gennadij Petrovič Kondrat'ev, Gennady Petrovich Kondrat'yev).

As a youth Kondrat'ev was in the Aleksandrinskii Academy and the Pavlovsk Military School, where he sang in the chorus, learned to play the violin and cello, and conducted the in-house orchestra. He left military school in 1856, and went to Italy to train as a singer in Milan, later touring in Florence. He began his stage career in Tiflis (now Tbilisi) in 1863, and made his debut in the Russian Opera in Saint Petersburg two years later in Glinka's Ruslan and Liudmila. From 1872 until 1900 he was the chief director of the Imperial Theatres in Saint Petersburg, and in his capacity as director he oversaw the premiere of Tchaikovsky's opera The Queen of Spades at the Mariinskii Theatre in 1890.

Tchaikovsky's correspondence with Gennadii Kondrat'ev:

• 1 letter from Tchaikovsky to Gennadii Kondrat'ev has survived, dating from 1886.