Brief Biography
Born in 1958 in Dnepropetrovsk (Ukraine).
In 1983, she graduated fr om the Gnesin State Musical-Pedagogical Institute (GMPI), wh ere her teachers included Rostislav N. Berberov, Irina A. Givental, Bjrislava B. Yefimenkova, and Nataliya S. Gulyanitskaya. After postgraduate studies (class of Fedor G. Arzamanov), she defended her Candidate of Arts dissertation on «Gluck’s Musical Dramas in the Context of Enlightenment Culture» (1988, Leningrad N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov’s Conservatory).
In 2000, she defended her Doctor of Arts dissertation on «Opera seria: Genesis and Poetics of the Genre» (State Institute of Art Studies, Moscow).
Since 1984, she has taught at the Gnesin Russian Academy of Music (RAM) becoming a professor in 2003, and since 2009, she has headed the Department of Analytical Musicology. In 1999–2000 and in 2001, I. P. Susidko taught at the Musicology Faculty of the University of Münster.
She has been awarded research grants three times (Austria, Germany, Italy) and five times grants from the Russian Humanitarian Science Foundation and the Russian Foundation for Basic Research.
Since 2000, I. P. Susidko has been a leading research fellow at the State Institute of Art Studies, Classical Western Art Department.
In 2009-2014, she was a professor at Moscow City Pedagogical University. Since 2017, she has been the editor-in-chief of the Gnesins’ after online periodical «Contemporary Musicology,» and a member of the editorial boards of the journals «Early Music» and «Scientific Notes of the Gnesin Russian Academy of Music».
Since 2024, she has been heading the Scientific and Creative Center for the Study of Problems of Musical Theater at the Gnesin academy.
Pedagogical Activity
I. P. Susidko teaches courses in musical form, methodology of teaching professional disciplines, and supervises diploma and dissertation work. She has developed curricula for new courses in the history of opera and ballet theater, contemporary musical theater, opera librettistics, music advertising, and an original special course in teaching musical form at the Historical-Theoretical-Compositional and Vocal Faculties.
In I. P. Susidko’s class, 55 diploma theses, 10 master’s theses, and 25 PhD dissertations have been defended.
Research Activity
I. P. Susidko is the author of over 120 scholarly articles, four monographs, and four teaching aids. Her research interests include: history and theory of foreign music of the 17th-20th centuries, musical form and analysis of musical works, history of opera theater, Russian music in the context of European culture, and music pedagogy.
For her book Italian Opera of the 18th Century, she received a commendation from the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation.
She is the initiator and curator of the international conferences «Opera in Musical Theater: History and Present Time» (2013, 2015, 2017, 2019, 2021, 2024, 2026), «Techniques of Musical Composition» (2015, 2017, 2019, 2021, 2023, 2025), and «Ballet in Musical Theater: History and Present Time » (2022). She has repeatedly served on expert councils for major international congresses, delivered papers at international conferences in Russia and abroad, and acted as editor-compiler for numerous collections of scholarly works and conference proceedings.
I. P. Susidko long headed the Student Scientific and Creative Society of the Academy; from the founding of the dissertation council at the Gnessin Russian Academy of Music, she served as its academic secretary, and currently is chair of the council, as well as a member of the dissertation council at the State Institute of Art Studies. She is also a member of the Scientific Committee of the Theory of Music Society of the Russian Federation.
Creative and educational activities
I. P. Susidko is the initiator and academic supervisor of productions of early Italian operas at the Gnesin Russian Academy of Music within the framework of the festival «Italian Music: A View from Russia» (2012), as well as within the project «Opera at the Court of Russian Empresses» (2024-2026), which included Russian and world premieres.
She has repeatedly given public lectures at the Zaryadye Concert Hall, the Diaghilev Festival (Perm), the Zavod Cultural Center, at the Cultural Center at the Italian Embassy in Russia, and at music universities and colleges across the Russian Federation. She has also appeared on the online program «Scientists Against Myths» and recorded a lecture series for the Arzamas portal.
