The American conductor Gavriel Heine has been a fixture on the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, Russia, for 15 years. He has led a whole lot of performances of classics like “Swan Lake” and “The Ceremony of Spring.” And he has achieved in order a protégé of the corporate’s chief: Valery Gergiev.

On Saturday, Mr. Heine went but once more to the Mariinsky, however not for a night on the podium. He was there to tell Mr. Gergiev — a longtime buddy and supporter of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia — that he was resigning from his put up as one of many state-run theater’s resident conductors. Mr. Heine gathered his possessions, together with a number of white bow ties and scores for “La Bohème” and “The Flip of the Screw,” and ready to go away the nation.

Mr. Heine, 47, had been more and more disturbed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “There’s no manner I might ever be in denial of what’s occurring in Ukraine,” he stated throughout a collection of interviews over the previous week. “Russia is just not a spot the place I need to increase my son. It’s not a spot the place I would like my spouse to be anymore. It’s not a spot I need to be anymore.”

His resignation comes because the struggle continues to upend performing arts. Cultural establishments in Europe and North America, vowing to not rent performers who assist Mr. Putin, have severed ties with some artists — most notably Mr. Gergiev — in addition to orchestras, theaters and ballet firms. Many artists, citing the invasion, have canceled appearances in Russia.

Mr. Gergiev, the theater’s normal and creative director, was as soon as one of many world’s busiest conductors, however his worldwide profession has crumbled. Carnegie Corridor, for instance, canceled a pair of concert events of the Mariinsky Orchestra underneath his baton that had been deliberate for Could, after he had been dropped from a collection of Vienna Philharmonic performances in February. He has returned in latest weeks to St. Petersburg to deal with that firm and his home cultural empire, which encompasses a number of phases, 1000’s of workers and tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in state financing.

Mr. Heine discovered Mr. Gergiev on the Mariinsky on Saturday, the place he was main rehearsals and performances of Wagner’s “Götterdämmerung” and Verdi’s “Attila.” He described repeatedly making an attempt to catch his mentor backstage to tell him of his resignation, lastly cornering him in an elevator.

It was a fast dialog: 5 minutes whereas Mr. Gergiev was speeding to a gathering. Mr. Heine stated that Mr. Gergiev appeared shocked however accepted his determination.

“He was very good to me,” Mr. Heine stated. “He gave me a handshake and a hug and wished me properly. And naturally I thanked him for giving me such an enormous probability fairly early in my profession.”

The 2 conductors additionally spoke about latest tensions between Russia and the West. Mr. Gergiev — who was fired from engagements in the USA and Europe, in addition to from the rostrum of the Munich Philharmonic, over his refusal to publicly condemn the struggle — defended his determination, saying that he was not a baby, Mr. Heine recalled.

The Mariinsky declined to touch upon Monday, and stated it couldn’t but verify Mr. Heine’s resignation. Nonetheless, the corporate eliminated Mr. Heine’s biography from its web site Monday night.

Mr. Heine’s departure from the Mariinsky is an sudden conclusion to his three-decade profession in Russia, the place he studied with famend academics and rose to turn out to be a conductor at one of many nation’s most prestigious homes. And his exit is one other blow to Russian cultural establishments, that are grappling with boycotts and cancellations by international teams because the nation’s arts more and more flip inward underneath Mr. Putin. Mr. Gergiev stays a essential determine in Mr. Putin’s marketing campaign. Mr. Putin, throughout a televised assembly final month, requested Mr. Gergiev whether or not he was excited by the thought of uniting the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow with the Mariinsky, an association that will take Russia again to the times of the czars.

“Russia is simply going to be increasingly closed,” stated Simon Morrison, a music professor at Princeton College. “It’s going to revert increasingly to its personal true self, harsh as which may appear — a sealed-off, indignant, paranoid and resentful feudal realm.”

Mr. Heine, who grew up in Cherry Hill, N.J., turned excited by Russian tradition as a teen. He accompanied his mom, a pianist, to a efficiency in Moscow, and whereas there took cello classes with a professor on the Moscow Conservatory.

After highschool, he returned to Russia for language and cultural research. In 1998, he turned one of many Moscow Conservatory’s first American graduates, then started to check with the eminent Russian conductor Ilya Musin, who additionally taught Mr. Gergiev.

His break got here in 2007, when Mr. Heine approached Mr. Gergiev throughout a rehearsal in Philadelphia and requested him whether or not the Mariinsky had any openings. Mr. Heine was invited to make his debut on the theater later that yr with Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro,” and shortly started to guide performances there repeatedly. In 2009, he was named a resident conductor.

Throughout his time on the Mariinsky, Mr. Heine was on the podium for over 850 performances and watched as the corporate grew in energy and measurement underneath Mr. Gergiev. The humanities and the state, Mr. Heine stated he got here to grasp, had been inexorably linked in Russia. He was within the theater on two events when Mr. Putin, the home’s principal benefactor, appeared for awards ceremonies and different occasions.

“I simply assumed that tradition is a precedence for this authorities, for no matter motive,” he stated. “They usually really feel very strongly about it, and that’s the connection.”

He acknowledged that Mr. Gergiev typically used artwork for political functions, resembling when he led a patriotic live performance within the Syrian metropolis of Palmyra in 2016, shortly after Russian airstrikes helped drive the Islamic State out of town.

Nonetheless, Mr. Heine stated, he was not bothered by Mr. Gergiev’s lengthy affiliation with Mr. Putin. The 2 have identified one another because the early Nineteen Nineties, when Mr. Putin was an official in St. Petersburg and Mr. Gergiev was starting his tenure on the Mariinsky, which was then known as the Kirov Theater.

“I by no means felt that we had been on the service of the state,” Mr. Heine stated. “It simply appeared just like the state trusted Gergiev for his creative priorities, and he satisfied them that his priorities had been good priorities, they usually funded that.”

The invasion of Ukraine modified his views on Russia and his place in it. He had a private connection to Ukraine, having served as chief conductor of the Kharkiv Symphony Orchestra there from 2003 to 2007. When he noticed pictures of Russian missiles hitting a constructing in Kharkiv in early March, he was distraught.

“That broke me,” he stated. “I noticed the faces of all the musicians that I had labored with. I considered my orchestra director who lives two blocks behind that constructing. I imply, that’s his neighborhood. I simply misplaced it. I couldn’t do something that day and I assumed that was just about it.”

He resolved to go away his place, partially as a result of he was frightened in regards to the security of his spouse and 11-year-old son. His household left for the USA in early March, whereas he went to Switzerland to guide a manufacturing of Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin” on the Opéra de Lausanne.

He returned to St. Petersburg final week and spent a number of days packing up his residence and saying goodbye to colleagues over meals at his favourite Italian restaurant close to the Mariinsky, the place a pizza is called for him. He submitted his resignation letter to the corporate on Sunday and returned the keys to his locker.

On Monday, he arrived in London, the place he’s set to guide a manufacturing of “Swan Lake” on the Royal Opera Home subsequent month.

He stated it was arduous for him to go away Russia, the place he has spent about half of his life. He considers himself Russian from a cultural perspective, although he stays an American citizen.

Nonetheless, Mr. Heine has made his peace with shifting on. “The unhappy half wasn’t strolling into the theater; the unhappy half was the frustration and the unhappiness of the those that I needed to inform I used to be leaving,” he stated.

“The theater’s not going anyplace,” he added. “I’m.”