Philip Glass canceled a Kennedy Center show, but this conductor brings his work center stage at L.A. Opera

When Dalia Stasevska heard opera euphony for the archetypal time, it was a infinitesimal of profound self-revelation. She was 13, increasing up successful the mill municipality of Tampere successful the southbound of Finland, and her schoolhouse librarian gave her a CD of Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” on with a translation of its Italian libretto.

“As a teenage girl, this melodramatic communicative touched my soul,” Stasevska says, adding that she inactive remembers the acquisition and thinking, “ ‘This euphony understands me, this is precisely however I feel.’ And that was…when I knew that I wanted to go a musician.”

Stasevska is present main conductor of Finland’s Lahti Symphony Orchestra and a prodigious conductor of orchestral euphony successful each forms. A engaged impermanent baton with companies astir the globe, she volition marque her L.A. Opera debut this Saturday with a accumulation of “Akhnaten” by Philip Glass, moving done precocious March.

John Holiday successful the rubric relation of L.A. Opera’s 2026 accumulation of “Akhnaten.”

(Cory Weaver)

The seminal enactment by Glass lands astatine L.A. Opera conscionable a period aft the world-famous composer abruptly canceled June’s satellite premiere of Symphony No. 15 “Lincoln” astatine the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. “While Philip Glass has pulled retired of Kennedy Center, his euphony volition beryllium beforehand and halfway astatine our production,” a rep for L.A. Opera wrote successful an email.

Stasevska, with her razor-sharp appreciation of the powerfulness of Glass’ work, is the perfect conductor to bring it there.

Stasevska, 41, walks from the ornate foyer of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, with its emerald greenish carpets and gleaming chandeliers, to the much mean hallways and cubicles of L.A. Opera’s offices. She’s been successful municipality rehearsing for a fewer weeks and jokes with immoderate of the show’s jugglers successful a kitchenette, wherever she makes herself a instrumentality pod coffee.

The conductor is petite with large, expressive eyes and a Cheshire cat’s smile. Her rima often pulls to the close erstwhile she speaks, her admirable non-native English tugged easterly successful a Finnish accent.

Opera remains her large love, and it seems a cleanable twist of destiny that Stasevska was tapped to behaviour “Akhnaten.” She saw it for the archetypal clip successful 2019 astatine a Helsinki cinema, successful a planetary broadcast of a accumulation by the Met. She couldn’t judge her person dozed off.

“I was like, ‘How could you autumn asleep? This was the champion happening I’ve ever seen successful my life. I would bash thing to behaviour this opera,’ ” she recalls saying.

Stasevska was calved successful 1984, the aforesaid twelvemonth that Glass’ hypnotic, ritualistic opera, astir an Egyptian pharaoh who dared to propulsion monotheism onto his polytheistic culture, debuted successful Stuttgart, Germany. Eight months later, Stasevska entered the satellite successful the Soviet-controlled metropolis of Kyiv, the kid of a Ukrainian begetter and Finnish mother.

Conductor Dalia Stasevska, who is making her L.A. Opera debut with Philip Glass’ “Akhnaten,” says that opera is her archetypal large love.

(David Butow / For the Times)

It was a fluke that she was calved successful Ukraine. Her parents, some painters, were surviving successful the Estonian superior of Tallinn, besides nether Soviet rule, but recovered themselves successful a Kyiv infirmary adjacent to household erstwhile Stasevska arrived. She’s ne'er lived successful Ukraine — she spent her archetypal fewer years successful Tallinn earlier moving to Finland astatine property 5— but her beingness has been infused with its heritage.

Her father, who arsenic a teen successful Tallinn began to rebel against Sovietization, insisted connected teaching Stasevska and her 2 younger brothers to talk Ukrainian astatine home. Her grandmother, Iryna, lived with the household and was an important caretaker for overmuch of her childhood. Stasevska grew up proceeding fantastic stories filled with dreamlike imagery of the homeland.

“She was specified a civilized, taste person,” Stasevska says of her grandmother, adding that she taught her grandkids everything she knew astir her location country. That’s why, adjacent though Stasevska was raised successful Finland, she grew up eating Ukrainian nutrient and proceeding Ukrainian people tunes. “I cognize the connection and recognize the culture,” she says.

Stasevska grew up poor, but euphony acquisition was mandatory for her and her brothers: “My begetter said, ‘This is going to beryllium your profession.’ It was nary question that this is not a hobby. So we started practicing immediately, precise determined. There was possibly immoderate forcing involved,” she says, laughing.

She played the violin from property 8, but it was lone aft she heard Puccini astatine 13 that she fell successful emotion with classical music. She became obsessed with the opera and orchestral repertoires and was instantly determined to play successful an orchestra. She approached the headmaster astatine her conservatory who placed her successful a drawstring ensemble earlier advancing her to the symphony orchestra arsenic a violinist.

At 18, Stasevska entered the Sibelius Academy successful Helsinki, which is named aft Finland’s astir celebrated composer, Jean Sibelius. She couldn’t halt herself from stealing a peek astatine the schoolhouse conductor’s score, copying bowings and poring implicit the details, but she didn’t indulge immoderate dreams of taking the podium herself. “I was going each week to the concerts,” she says, “but it took maine truthful agelong to spot idiosyncratic that looked similar me.”

She was 20 erstwhile she saw a pistillate conductor for the archetypal time, calling it “the 2nd large infinitesimal successful my life.” When Stasevska expressed involvement successful trying it herself, she was referred to Jorma Panula, a legendary conductor and teacher successful Finland. Panula invited her to be 1 of his masterclasses, and connected the archetypal downbeat of her archetypal acquisition conducting, “I knew instantly that this was beyond thing I’ve experienced successful my life,” she says. “It became this benignant of madness moment.”

She loved the sheer physicality of it, she says, but besides “that I tin impact the music, and that I tin impact the interpretation, due to the fact that I had truthful overmuch successful my bosom that I felt astir the music.”

After completing her conducting studies successful 2012, Stasevska assisted Panula — who emphasized discovering unsocial “gestures successful specified a mode that the orchestral musicians cognize what you mean,” she says. She besides worked with her chap Finn, Esa-Pekka Salonen. Stasevska became main impermanent conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra successful 2019 and main of the Lahti Symphony successful 2020.

When she’s not globetrotting, Stasevska lives successful Helsinki with her young girl and her husband, Lauri Porra — a dense metallic bassist who is besides the great-grandson of Sibelius.

She likes to champion caller euphony — her 2024 album, “Dalia’s Mixtape,” featured works by Anna Meredith, Caroline Shaw and different modern composers. She is besides a vocal protagonist of the onshore wherever she was calved and has spoken retired against Russia’s warfare successful Ukraine.

John Holiday arsenic Akhnaten, with So Young Park, astatine right, arsenic Queen Tye, successful L.A. Opera’s 2026 accumulation of “Akhnaten.”

(Cory Weaver)

Stasevska’s L.A. Opera debut arrives connected the aforesaid week arsenic the 4th day of Russia’s invasion. Both of her brothers — 1 a movie director, the different a writer — moved to Ukraine and person borne witnesser to the war, which has fixed her “another level of experiencing this horror,” she says.

Stasevska has made it her ngo to rise funds — much than 250,000 euros to day — to supply basal supplies peculiarly for children and elders who are without powerfulness and huddling successful freezing acold homes. She has adjacent driven successful supplies herself by truck.

She has besides conducted concerts determination — and her adjacent medium volition observe the country’s composers successful a meaningful way. “Ukrainian Mixtape,” which she recorded with the BBC Symphony Orchestra successful London, features works by 5 composers who scope from the 19th period to the 1960s. Three are premiere recordings of artists who person been wholly forgotten, which required a twelvemonth of searching for materials.

“I deliberation that it volition not permission anybody cold,” Staveska says, “and I anticipation that it volition animate everybody to observe Ukrainian euphony more, and that we volition perceive it much connected main stages of the satellite — wherever it deserves to be.”

For now, though, her absorption is connected past Egypt and Philip Glass — and opera. She says her goal, successful each concert, is to springiness audiences the aforesaid acquisition she had erstwhile she was 13, that singular feeling that the euphony uniquely understands them.