Mikhail Chulaki

Who was Mikhail Chulaki?

Mikhail Ivanovich Chulaki was a Soviet composer and teacher.

He studied under the composer Vladimir Shcherbachov at the Leningrad Conservatory, graduating in 1931. He held administrative and teaching positions, including at the Leningrad Conservatory, and taught composition at the Moscow Conservatory: among his composition pupils was the 15-year-old Mstislav Rostropovich, whom Chulaki did much to support both materially and as an artist. Before World War II he was artistic director of the Leningrad Philharmonic.

From 1963-70 he worked as artistic director of the Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow. While in that post, he gave Rostropovich his first major break as a conductor, inviting him to conduct Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin.

His son was the writer Mikhail Mikhailovich Chulaki.