The Opera and Ballet Companies on tour in Germany

The Mariinsky Theatre is visiting the heartland of Germany’s River Rhine and River Main region with a cast of over three hundred performers including the opera and ballet companies, orchestra, chorus and children’s chorus. The tour will visit two cities: on 5 and 6 February in Frankfurt am Main there will be an opera programme under the baton of Valery Gergiev, and on 7, 9 and 10 February the Mariinsky Ballet Company will be performing in Darmstadt.

The opera leg of the tour takes place in Frankfurt (Großer Saal of the Alte Oper). On 5 February there will be a matinee performance of Rodion Shchedrin’s opera The Enchanted Wanderer featuring mezzo-soprano Kristina Kapustinskaya, tenor Andrei Popov and bass Sergei Aleksashkin. That evening there will be a performance of Modest Musorgsky’s opera Boris Godunov with Yevgeny Nikitin in the title role. On 6 February in Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s opera The Queen of Spades Maria Guleghina will be performing as Liza, Larisa Diadkova as the Countess, Alexander Antonenko as Herman, Nikolai Putilin as Tomsky, Vladimir Moroz as Yeletsky and Ekaterina Semenchuk as Polina.

The theatre and concert hall of the Alte Oper, designed by Berlin architect Richard Lucae, was built in 1880 with the financial support of rich aristocrats dwelling in the city. As a cultural centre not just for Frankfurt but for all of Hesse, the Alte Oper has seen many premieres over the course of its history, among them operas by Richard Wagner and Carl Orff’s cantata Carmina Burana. As well as the Großer Saal, the theatre complex also incorporates the Mozart Saal and several conference halls which annually host some three hundred public events such as conferences, symposiums, society receptions and awards ceremonies.

The ballet part of the tour programme, to be performed at the Staatstheater in Darmstadt, opens on 7 February with Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov’s Swan Lake, featuring Viktoria Teryoshkina and Yevgeny Ivanchenko in the lead roles. On 9 February Olesya Novikova, Oxana Skorik and Alexander Sergeyev will be performing the lead solo roles in The Sleeping Beauty. The tour concludes on 10 February with a Gala Concert featuring George Balanchine’s Scotch Symphony and the Grand pas from Marius Petipa’s ballet Paquita. The ballets will be conducted by Alexei Repnikov. All performances begin at 19:30.

The Mariinsky Theatre tour is a joint project of the Alte Oper and the Staatstheater, run on the initiative of the Frankfurt Rhein-Main Cultural Foundation.