| On 16 November Mariinsky Theatre soloist Anna Kiknadze will be performing the role of Polina in Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s opera The Queen of Spades for the first time. | |||||
Scene from the opera The Queen of Spades | Mezzo-soprano Anna Kiknadze has a dazzling gift for comedy and a strong stage presence, and she can “perform the dark passion of the Princess de Bouillon in Adriana Lecouvreur and the delicate operetta style of Offenbach equally impressively.” Opera buffa, works by Italian and German classical composers and the Russian operatic legacy occupy an important place in the extensive repertoire of the singer, who first made a name for herself when still a student at the Academy of Young Singers. Last season this repertoire was expanded to include three very different characters – the romantic Polovtsian maiden Konchakova in Alexander Borodin’s opera Prince Igor as well as the miserly Korobochka and Dryad the nymph in new opera productions. Stage Director Vasily Barkhatov’s vision of the grotesque character of Korobochka in Rodion Shchedrin’s Dead Souls saw her transformed into the owner of a sewing workshop, overseeing a veritable army of “gastarbeiters” from Central Asia. In Richard Strauss’ opera Ariadne auf Naxos, Kiknadze’s Dryad was hailed by critics as being “a million dollars.” | ||||
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