2023-04-20 07:09:15
At the presidium table, the leaders of the Bolshoi – General Director Vladimir Urin and artistic director of the ballet Makhar Vaziev, as well as the moderator of the conference, head of the press service of the Bolshoi Theater Ekaterina Novikova. Since the post of musical director is still vacant, his duties, like last season, were taken over by the general director himself, consulting, of course, with those conductors with whom the theater signed a contract.
– It’s really bad, to be honest. But we will enter into a very serious discussion if we discuss names. We have not had such a large number of guest conductors in many years. We are not in a hurry, but we understand the need to choose. And as soon as such a candidate arises, we will announce it – Urin commented on the ongoing situation with the absence of a music director for more than a year, and he himself announced opera plans.
So, in the new, already 248th season of plans, especially in the opera, there are “huge masses”. We are expecting as many as six opera premieres (three of them will take place on the B.A. Pokrovsky Chamber Stage) and three ballet premieres.
The season of premieres on the Historic Stage on November 16 will be opened by Adriana Lecouvler by Francesco Cilea. Interestingly, Andrey Pisarev is the stage director (stage conductor – Giacomo Sagripanti, conductor – Philipp Selivanov). Two weeks later – a new opera premiere. This time on the Chamber Stage of the Bolshoi, on November 30, two operas will be shown here at once – “The Son of the Mandarin” by Caesar Cui and “The Nightingale” by Igor Stravinsky. Moreover, the latter is a joint project of the Bolshoi Theater with the Puppet Theater. Obraztsova (stage director – Alexei Frandetti, conductor – Andrey Vereshchagin). The first spring premiere of the Bolshoi is Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin on the New Stage. Film director Sergei Ursulyak will try his hand at opera for the first time as a stage director (stage conductor – Philipp Selivanov). Another big opera premiere – “Samson and Delilah” by Saint-Saens (director – Adolf Shapiro, conductor – Artyom Abashev) – is scheduled for May. And finally, two more premieres on the Chamber Stage. At the end of April, the premiere of the opera for children to the music of the contemporary composer Andrei Rubtsov “Peter Pan” (stage director – Nina Chusova, conductor – the composer himself) is to take place. And the Pagliacci by Leoncavallo will end the season (stage conductor – Alexei Vereshchagin, stage director – Hans-Joachim Frei).
And to the 150th anniversary of the world premiere and the 200th anniversary of the birth of A.N. Ostrovsky is another co-production. In March 1873, in three weeks, Tchaikovsky, at the request of the playwright himself, wrote music for Ostrovsky’s enchanting fairy tale The Snow Maiden. The premiere on May 11 of the same year took place at the Bolshoi Theater, because the Maly was under renovation. And now, a century and a half later, this spring fairy tale by Ostrovsky will be shown on the stage of the Bolshoi. The stars of the Maly Theater (Irina Muravyova, Vladimir Nosik and others) will perform the play together with the choir and orchestra of the Bolshoi Theater (stage director – Alexei Dubrovsky, conductor – Ivan Nikiforochkin).
As for the ballet plans, the first show on December 1 will be the “debt” – the premiere of the ballet “The Queen of Spades” postponed from the current season. It was announced at last year’s press conference and was originally held the other day. But the choreographer Yuri Possokhov did not have time to prepare the ballet. The composer Yuri Krasavin, who, in the neighborhood not with anyone, but with Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, also wrote music for this ballet, also turned in his score late. Therefore, instead of The Queen of Spades, on June 14, on the Historical Stage, this season, the ballet, re-created by the famous French choreographer Pierre Lacotte, who unfortunately passed away last week, will be completely renewed this season. It was first shown at the Bolshoi 10 years ago.
Let me remind you that a ballet with exactly the same name has already been staged with great success at the Bolshoi. In 2001, the great French choreographer Roland Petit set it to Tchaikovsky’s music. For choreographer Yuri Posokhov, The Pikrovaya Dama will be the seventh production at his native Bolshoi Theatre. Previously, the ex-premier of the Bolshoi, now working in the United States, staged such ballets as Magritomania, Cinderella, Classical Symphony, A Hero of Our Time, Nureyev, The Seagull here.
Another completely new ballet, also to the music of Yuri Krasavin, will be The Tempest based on Shakespeare’s play of the same name. Rumors about her have been circulating around the Bolshoi for three or four months now. At the press conference, it turned out that the choreographer Vyacheslav Samodurov, the current artistic director of the Yekaterinburg troupe Ural Opera Ballet, who will leave his position at the end of this season and switch to free bread, will put it on. Will work under already concluded contracts. One of them is a contract in the Bolshoi.
Samodurov has already staged two ballets at the Bolshoi. One unsuccessful – “Ondine”, and one more than successful – “Dancemania” to the music of the same Krasavin. Now he is nominated as a nominee for the Golden Mask. Another large-scale premiere next season will be the legendary ballet Romeo and Juliet to the music of Prokofiev, one of the most popular ballets of the twentieth century. The famous performances of the Soviet period are back in vogue. In the repertoire of the theater “Flame of Paris”, “The Fountain of Bakhchisaray”. And in the difficult political situation that has arisen in the world, in the conditions of import substitution, the traditional repertoire of the Bolshoi Theater, tested for decades, is more than ever indispensable.
“Romeo and Juliet” staged by Sergei Radlov and Leonid Lavrovsky, which has been on the stage of the Bolshoi for almost 40 years, is a real performance brand of the Bolshoi Theater. It was with him, after the tour of the troupe in 1956 in London, that the worldwide fame of the company began, which all over the world began to be called the Bolshoi Ballet. The success was so deafening that the car in which Juliet – Galina Ulanova got into, according to the then artistic director of the theater and choreographer of the performance Leonid Lavrovsky, excited by the success of the crowd of English balletomanes, was dragged to the hotel at idle, without letting the engine start.
The ballet was first staged in its entirety at the Kirov Theater in Leningrad in 1940 (staged by Sergei Radlov, choreographer Leonid Lavrovsky, starring Galina Ulanova and Konstantin Sergeyev). He got into the Bolshoi Performance only after the war, he was transferred from the stage of the Mariinsky (then Kirov) Theater in 1946, he was constantly present in the repertoire until 1980, when he was replaced by a more dance performance by Yuri Grigorovich. The last time “Romeo and Juliet” by Radlov – Lavrovsky was resumed on December 25, 1995, still under the direction of Vladimir Vasiliev. This time, the son of the choreographer, Mikhail Leonidovich Lavrovsky, will become the choreographer.
At the same time, the Bolshoi Theater does not refuse the traditional version of Yuri Grigorovich. The performance is listed in the repertoire, although it has not been included in the poster for 5 years. So it will also have to be overhauled. Of course, it is too expensive to have two versions of the same performance in the repertoire at once. And many would prefer that another famous ballet of the Soviet period, The Fountain of Bakhchisarai, return to the repertoire. Moreover, his choreographer is the long-term director and choreographer of the Bolshoi Theater Rostislav Zakharov.
At the press conference, the conversation turned to yet another famous classical ballet from the era of romanticism – Jules Perrot’s Esmeralda, revised by Marius Petipa, which was very successfully restored on the stage of the Bolshoi Theater by specialists in ancient ballets of the 19th century, Yuri Burlaka and Vasily Medvedev. This time, in the conditions of “import substitution” and a sharply narrowed repertoire base, they started talking about him more condescendingly than in previous years. The artistic director of the ballet troupe Makhar Vaziev even said that he was “considering” this ballet for inclusion in the repertoire. True, Vladimir Urin sarcastically remarked that, at the request of Burlaka, the scenery and costumes had already been given to another theater, where Burlaka’s ballet was being restored, so “it will be problematic to do this,” and they say, if Makhar Khasanovich decides to resume the classics of the 19th century, then the sets and costumes will have to be redone.
The general director also answered the question about the formation of front-line brigades from the artists of the Bolshoi, as it was during the Great Patriotic War: “The theater has a special program, and a number of performances are shown for the families of servicemen – participants in a special military operation. There are and will be performances, the money from which is fully transferred to help the families of participants in the military operation. I spoke with representatives of the Ministry of Defense, and if such a need arises and there is security, then, of course, the Bolshoi Theater will participate in this as well.”
The situation with the ballet “Nureyev”, which, we recall, even at the last press conference, the general director of the Bolshoi Theater promised to show this season, now commented as follows: “The play” Nureyev “was removed from the repertoire in connection with the signed law, which concerns the media and prohibits the promotion of non-traditional values. This performance, in the opinion of not only ballet lovers, but also people who evaluate morality, who also go to the theater, directly falls under this law.
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