Interviews

On 23 March Rodion Shchedrin’s opera The Enchanted Wanderer will be performed at the Mariinsky Theatre for the first time. Stage Director Alexei Stepanyuk speaks about the transfer of the production from the Concert Hall to the Mariinsky Theatre and about work on a production of Nikolai Karetnikov’s opera The Mystery of the Apostle Paul, to be premiered on 14 March.

Leading Mariinsky Opera Company soloists Sergei Aleksashkin, Vladimir Vaneyev and Yevgeni Nikitin speak about Chaliapin, the art of opera and their own selves on the eve of the 12 February concert Stars of the Mariinsky Theatre in Chaliapin’s Legacy.

Mozart and de Beaumarchais… Now, this is some kind of almost mystical contemporaneousness. The farther from us the date of 1 May 1786, when Le nozze di Figaro was premiered in Vienna, the more vividly we see the whole range of problems written about by de Beaumarchais and reproduced by Mozart in his musical dramaturgy. The opera becomes, quite simply, our own time…

Yekaterina Semenchuk, Sergei Semishkur and Alexei Markov speaking of their work on the opera Les Troyens, Berlioz' music and their roles

I think that the opera is a space where the concept of time disappears if the production is able to touch the depths of our souls. It is something that we are duty bound to attempt to do.

The Russian piano school was and remains the best, and I always feel lucky to have been exposed to it and to have experienced first hand what it had to offer. Needless to say, I owe an eternal debt to my teachers – Yevgeny Timakin and Yakov Flier. Russian culture, including its music and traditions, is vibrant and very dear to me, full of life and highly charged with emotions and feelings.

I sing at the Mariinsky not just because I am contracted to do so. I believe that it is my main theatre, my base in a creative, musical and moral sense. I love to meet Petersburg audiences because they are extremely competent in both drama and musical theatres.