Mariinsky Theatre nominees for the Golden Mask awards

Russia’s national Golden Mask theatre prize has announced the nominees for the 2010-2011 season. Along with other Russian music theatres, the Mariinsky Theatre has been forwarded in nine categories including twenty-three nominees. One ballet and three opera premieres have been nominated in the category “Best Production” for last season: Rodion Shchedrin’s Dead Souls and the ballet Le Parc with choreography by Angelin Preljocaj at the Mariinsky Theatre and Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida and Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Concert Hall.

The stage directors of the operas – Vasily Barkhatov, Daniele Finzi Pasca and Claudia Solti – have been nominated in the category “Opera – Best Work by a Director.” While Dead Souls is neither Vasily Barkhatov’s first work for the Mariinsky Theatre nor his first Golden Mask nomination, Finzi Pasca, who is well-known in Russia and who staged Aida, and Claudia Solti, for whom A Midsummer Night’s Dream marked her debut as a stage director as well as her first work in Russia, have received nominations for Russia’s most prestigious theatre prize for collaborating with a Russian company for the very first time.

These nominations also include the designers of the productions – Set Designer Zinovy Margolin, Costume Designer Maria Danilova and Lighting Designer Damir Ismagilov (Dead Souls), Set and Costume Designer Isabella Bywater and Lighting Designer Jennifer Schriever (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) and Daniele Finzi Pasca and Alexis Bowles for the lighting design for Aida.

The exacting professional jury also focussed its attentions on roles by Mariinsky Opera Company soloists in the season’s premieres: nominees in the category “Best Female role in Opera” include Svetlana Volkova as Plyushkin and Larisa Diadkova as Korobochka in Dead Souls, Ekaterina Semenchuk as Amneris in Aida and Olga Trifonova as Tytania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream; “Best Male Role in Opera” nominees include Sergei Aleksashkin as Sobakevich (the singer has already won St Petersburg’s Golden Sofit award for this role) and Sergei Semishkur as Nozdryov in Dead Souls and Artyom Krutko as Oberon and Willard White as Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Prima Ballerina Diana Vishneva has been nominated for her performance in the ballet Le Parc.

Productions that have received Golden Mask nominations are to be performed in the near future at the Mariinsky Theatre and at the Concert Hall: Dead Souls on 18 November and 2 December; Aida at the Concert Hall on 17 and 19 November, 18 and 31 December and 18 January; and A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Concert Hall on 21 and 22 December.