The year of the Mariinsky Theatre in Yugra

The Year of the Mariinsky Theatre in Yugra is opening at the Khanty-Mansiysk Yugra-Classic Concert and Theatre Centre. As part of the project, on 12 February the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra will be performing Sergei Prokofiev’s First Symphony and Dmitry Shostakovich’s Eighth Symphony, while 13 February will see an opera and ballet gala concert featuring ballet company soloists Yekaterina Kondaurova, Viktoria Tereshkina, Valeria Martynyuk, Maria Shirinkina, Oxana Skorik, Alexander Sergeyev, Filipp Stepin, Andrei Yermakov and Timur Askerov and opera company soloists Larisa Gogolevskaya, Zhanna Dombrovskaya, Anna Kiknadze, Avgust Amonov, Khachatur Badalyan, Nikolai Putilin, Alexei Tanovitski and Yuri Vorobiev. The concerts will be conducted by Valery Gergiev.

The people of Yugra are already familiar with the Mariinsky Theatre – maestro Gergiev has performed in Khanty-Mansiysk on seven occasions. This new project, The Year of the Mariinsky Theatre in Yugra, is a “summing up” of the results of the theatre’s seven-year partnership with the autonomous region. Last year maestro Gergiev and the mayor of Yugra Natalia Komarova agreed on cultural collaboration and entrenching relations, signing a statement of intentions concerning common interests. On 10 February auditions begin for young performers and musicians at Valery Gergiev’s School of Arts. In the future, the project will see a series of meetings focussing on the history of the Mariinsky Theatre with recordings of legendary performances, while the audience will also be able to familiarise themselves with the lives of great musicians who dedicated themselves to Russia’s oldest music theatre. Over the course of the year, Yugra will host special master-classes for school pupils and students aged between sixteen and twenty-six with soloists of the Mariinsky Opera and Ballet Companies and orchestral musicians. The top participants can look forward to a training period at the Mariinsky Theatre in October 2012 at the end of which there will be a combined concert of soloists from Yugra and young Mariinsky Theatre stars at the theatre’s Concert Hall. In late December 2012 there will be a final concert in honour of the region’s foundation day featuring performers from St Petersburg and Yugra.

General Director of the Yugra-Classic Concert and Theatre Centre Irina Tkachenko said of the forthcoming events that “Regardless of the great distance we will be in direct contact with the Mariinsky Theatre. We may be on the sixtieth parallel and geographically remote from St Petersburg, but our hearts, our thoughts and our artistic passions and successes are inextricably linked with the Mariinsky Theatre.”