Boris Ignatov

Boris Ignatov was born in Moscow. Having studied Classical Philology and Theatre Studies, he worked as a music journalist for the newspaper Moscow News and the radio station Echo of Moscow, as well as an editor for the Bolshoi Theatre's magazine. In 2007 he joined the team of the Paris Opera at the invitation of its then Director, Gerard Mortier, first as a production assistant and subsequently as a casting assistant. At the start of the 2009/10 season he took up a two-year post as Casting Manager at the Flemish Opera in Antwerp and Ghent. In 2012 he became Head of Casting at Madrid's Teatro Real, again under the artistic direction of Gerard Mortier, and from 2015 to 2017 he served as Artistic Administrator and Casting Director of the Ruhrtriennale under Johan Simons.

Boris Ignatov has cast productions for conductors including Semyon Bychkov, Teodor Currentzis, Sylvain Cambreling, Ivor Bolton, Thomas Hengelbrock, Tomáš Hanus, Alberto Zedda, Leif Segerstam, Dennis Russell Davies, Pablo Heras-Casado, Hartmut Haenchen, René Jacobs, Cornelius Meister, Stefano Montanari and Oksana Lyniv. He has worked equally closely with the composers Christian Jost, Charles Wuorinen, Mauricio Sotelo, Alberto Posadas and Bernhard Lang, and with the directors Christoph Marthaler, Krzysztof Warlikowski, Dmitri Tcherniakov, Peter Sellars, Johan Simons, Ivo van Hove, Pierre Audi, Tatjana Gürbaca, Peter Konwitschny, Nigel Lowery and Martin Kušej.

He has repeatedly served on the juries of major singing competitions, among them the Concurs Tenor Viñas, Neue Stimmen and the Cesti Competition. From 2024 to 2026 he was Artistic Director of the AIDS Gala in Düsseldorf.
Boris Ignatov has been Casting Director of Staatsoper Stuttgart since the 2018/19 season, and Casting Consultant to the Opéra de Lille since 2025/26.