Mariinsky Theatre premiere enchants Kazan

The Mariinsky Theatre has performed the Kazan premiere of Rodion Shchedrin’s opera The Enchanted Wanderer at the Chaliapin Festival, while after the performance Valery Gergiev gave a press conference.

The Mariinsky Opera Company, including over one hundred and seventy soloists, musicians and the chorus, arrived in Kazan on 14 February for one day. Valery Gergiev conducting. “The performance was a tour de force, demonstrating to the people of Kazan what contemporary opera can be like,” commented BUSINESS ONLINE. Following the premiere Valery Gergiev took to the stage and “standing amidst the sets of the production gave a thirty-minute-long press conference.” He was joined by Raufal Mukhametzyanov, Director of the Tatar Academic Musa Jalil Theatre. “Gergiev commented that he is interested in an exchange tour with the Kazan Opera” and that he was willing to bring to Kazan productions not in the repertoire at the theatre there “and in turn the Mariinsky Theatre would be delighted to see productions and performances by the Kazan Theatre. So we will be sharing our houses.”

Over the course of the last three years The Enchanted Wanderer has been performed in seven countries in addition to regions throughout Russia. In the Mariinsky Theatre alone it has been performed almost twenty-five times. “I am delighted that my colleagues in Kazan have come forward with such a bold and vital plan. For opera-going audiences this has a high dose of the ‘feel-good-factor’, it is a major event,” the maestro stated. “This is the first time I have taken part in this festival and it is a great honour for me.”

ITAR-TASS noted that Valery Gergiev promised that the Mariinsky Theatre would return to Kazan “at full strength.” The theatre’s plans for next season include Jules Massenet’s opera Don Quichotte: “Possibly after the premiere in St Petersburg the production will tour to Kazan, Fyodor Chaliapin’s hometown,” Gergiev said. “Don Quichotte is a work that Chaliapin instantly took to unattainable heights at the very first performance. And the fact that this great man of Kazan was the first performer of this amazing role should never be forgotten.”