The opening of the new season at the Bolshoi Theater turned out to be not only Moscow: on the Historical Stage they showed “The Queen of Spades” (conducted by Tugan Sokhiev), on the Kamernaya Theater – “Pearl Seekers” by Bizet (staged by Vladislavs Nastavshevs), and the ballet troupe opened its season in Samara, where at the festival “Shostakovich. XX Century” shows Jean-Christophe Mayo’s play “The Taming of the Shrew” to the music of Shostakovich. On the stage of the Bolshoi, the artists will now appear on September 17 in the ballet Swan Lake.
On the same day, a gathering of the troupe took place on the Historical Stage – for the first time in two years. Last season, it was not possible to get ready for the opening, due to restrictions, the management had to communicate with the team electronically. But the current meeting was held in a cheerful spirit, with humor, prizes and with a video, in the genre of “feast in time of the plague” that showed the scope of the theater’s creative life in the pandemic season.
As the theater director Vladimir Urin noted: “The last season was very difficult, especially for the artists: we did not understand what awaited us, how the situation would develop. But despite all the difficulties, we did not cancel a single premiere, only postponed one of them. On stage, only one performance was canceled due to the artist’s illness, and on Kamernaya, several performances were canceled. All other performances – no matter whether the hall was 75 or 50 percent full – we held. We did our job. ” Although, according to Vladimir Urin, more than 500 people out of 3,400 working at the Bolshoi Theater have been ill. And under such circumstances, the theater managed to release ten premieres last season and show more than six hundred performances and concerts.
In the new season, they intend not to slow down: nine premieres have been announced – six opera and three ballet premieres (and all ballet premieres will be world premieres).
The opera plans were presented to the troupe by the musical director and conductor of the theater Tugan Sokhiev, who noticed that, of course, it was difficult, despite everything that happened outside the theater, to pretend that everything was fine. But the artists survived. The performances of the new season are already in the works: on November 3, there will be a premiere of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, directed by St. Petersburg director Semyon Spivak; in February, the premiere of Wagner’s opera Lohengrin, which has a rich Moscow history York), in June Mussorgsky’s “Khovanshchina” will appear on the Historical Stage.
The new version of the play will be staged by British director Simon McBurney and conducted by Tugan Sokhiev. Three repertoire rarities will take place on the Chamber Stage: in one evening – “Maddalena” by Prokofiev and “Spanish Hour” by Ravel, “Falstaff” by Antonio Salieri and Belcantian “Linda di Chamouni” by Donizetti. Also in the next season, performances are announced in the performances of Anna Netrebko, Placido Domingo, Ildar Abdrazakov, Hasmik Grigoryan, Albina Shagimuratova – the stars who graced the difficult last season of the Bolshoi Theater.
The layout of the ballet premieres was explained by Makhar Vaziev, the head of the ballet troupe, who also noted that last season will be remembered at the Bolshoi Theater forever as a difficult, alarming period, but very significant. According to him, last season started hard, but with four ballet premieres at once, and for foreign colleagues it became an inspiring event that gave hope.
In the new season, the Bolshoi ballet is preparing three premieres. The first of them will be “The Master and Margarita” to the music of Schnittke (its premiere was planned back in the dock time). At the end of March, Alexei Ratmansky will stage a ballet to Bach’s music for the Bolshoi troupe, “The Art of the Fugue” Pimonov.
by the way
A detailed conversation about the life and creative prospects of the Bolshoi Theater will take place today at the “Business Breakfast” at the editorial office of the “Rossiyskaya Gazeta”, to which the directors of the theater Vladimir Urin, Tugan Sokhiev, Makhar Vaziev are invited.
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