Range opera now an annual event

Gavriel Heine—Gavi to friends and family—has always loved music.

Understandable, since his mother is Aurora native Veda Zuponcic, a classical pianist. And Heine does play the piano, a bit. There were lessons when he was very young, and then he moved on to the violin. But the teacher made him stand when he played, even in practice. “And I didn’t like standing up,” he said.

So he moved on to the cello, a sit-down kind of thing. And it became his instrument.

Even though he always, always, always wanted to play the drums.

Heine grew up in New Jersey, where his mother is a music professor at Rowan University. In the early ‘80s, she created the Hollybush Festival there. In 1987, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of a Lyndon Johnson/Alexei Kosygin U.S./Soviet summit held in the Hollybush mansion on the university’s campus, she created an American-Soviet season for the festival. And she added a U.S/Russian competition for composers. She traveled to the Soviet Union many times. “I tagged along,” Heine said. In 1991 he was there for five weeks, taking private cello lessons. “In those five weeks I learned more than I had in five years.”

He said it was like being on a different planet. The teaching techniques were different. The results were remarkable. “I wanted to play the cello like that,” he said.

Famed Russian cello teacher Stefan Kalianov advised Heine to finish high school in America and then return to Russia to study under him at the conservatory in Moscow. In 1998 Heine was the first American to graduate from the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory.

And because he wanted to be an orchestra conductor, he then studied under professor Ilya Musin at the St. Petersburg Conservatory.

Three years later Heine returned to America to attend Indiana University, earning a master’s degree in conducting in 2003. His mother had studied at IU in the 1960s. So had his lawyer dad, who loved the theater. “He was falling in love with music while falling in love with this girl from Minnesota,” Heine said.

He himself fell in love at IU; his wife Eliso studied violin there. They married in 2004. Their son Daniel plays the oboe—and the electric bass.

“We’ve got classical musicians and rockers in our family,” Heine said.

While studying the cello in Moscow, he was the drummer in a rock band. They wrote their own music, with English lyrics, and played covers of Led Zeppelin, Rush and Pink Floyd.

After IU, Heine spent four years as chief conductor of the Kharkiv Symphony Orchestra in Ukraine. In 2007 he joined the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, Russia, as resident conductor for ballet, opera and symphony performances.

He conducted more than 850 performances in just his years at the Mariinsky.

And then, in early 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. When Heine saw what Russian rockets did to Kharkiv, “it just broke my brain.”

He resigned his position at the Mariinsky. “That period of my life has ended,” he said.

He and his family left St. Petersburg, traveling to Finland by shuttle to get on Finnair to return to the United States. The family is living in New Jersey now; Heine freelances as a conductor for ballet and opera. He recently conducted at the Opéra de Paris in France for several weeks; he’s also conducted in England, Switzerland, Georgia, the United Arab Emirates, Italy, and several U.S. cities that have included New Orleans, New York, Detroit, Minneapolis and Charlotte. A contract will take him to Norway soon.

But until July 21, he’ll be conducting the orchestra at the Northern Lights Music Festival.

“This isn’t just a music festival,” he said. “It’s her (Veda Zuponcic) giving back to the Range because the Range gave her so much. It’s personal, not just a pretty northern location with birch trees and fishing.”

As for classical music, sometimes Rangers think ‘that’s not for me.’

“Well, you’d be surprised what’s for you,” Heine said. “Americans have a major tradition of going to ‘The Nutcracker’ around Christmas. Every little ballet school puts on a production of ‘The Nutcracker.’ This is a Tchaikovsky ballet that’s part of Americans’ Christmas tradition. It’s what you do in December. Just expand that a little, and make it not only for Christmas.

“I get it that people don’t have the experience of going to opera, and maybe they don’t have experience playing music. But maybe they do. Maybe they took piano lessons as a kid. Maybe they took dance lessons. Maybe they played trumpet in the city band or the bass drum in the marching band. They have some kind of reference point.

“If you think it’s not for you, think again. Give it a shot.”

In 2011, Heine stepped aside from his conducting at the Mariinsky Conservatory for about a month and returned to Minnesota to conduct NLMF’s first opera. An opera is now an established part of the festival. “It’s like going to the movies, except everything’s live—and everything’s sung!” he said. “Music amplifies the story.”

“Leonard Bernstein’s Candide,” this year’s operetta, is in English. It will be performed on Friday, July 12, in Aurora, and again on Sunday, July 14, in Chisholm.

“I love to be in Minnesota,” Heine said. “I have nothing but love for the Range.”

And years of memories. “I would come alone to see Grandma and Grandpa (Helen and Herman Zuponcic, in Aurora),” he said.

He had cousins to play with. It was beautiful, and safe, and they felt free. There was always something fun to do. “People were really, really nice,” he said. “We were so spoiled.”