The Mariinsky Theatre’s European Tour with Gérard Depardieu

The tour begins inthe  French capital where there will be  two days of performances of works by Igor Stravinsky at the Théâtre des Champs Élysées. 7 March will see a performance of Les Noces with opera soloists Mlada Khudoley, Olga Savova, Alexander Timchenko and Andrei Serov as well as pianist Sergei Babayan and his students Stanislav Khristenko, Dmitri Levkovich and Marina Radyushina.The culmination of the concert will come with the opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex starring renowned French actor Gérard Depardieu as the Narrator and opera soloists Ekaterina Semenchuk, Sergei Semishkur, Alexei Markov, Mikhail Petrenko and Alexander Timchenko. The next day, on 8 March, there will be  performances of Pétrouchka, Symphony of Psalms and Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra,the solo to be performed by Boris Berezovsky.

From Paris the Mariinsky Theatre performers will move on to the German city of Dortmund with a programme of Russian music. On 9 March they will perform Igor Stravinsky’s Pétrouchka and Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No 6, Pathétique. On 10 March there will be a performance of Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex in addition to Sergei Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto with young Chinese pianist Yuja Wang. These appearances will take place at the Grosser Saal of the Konzerthaus in Dortmund.

The next stops on the European tour will take the musicians to another two French cities. On 11 March the Orchestra will visit Lyon for a concert at the Auditorium and on 12 March they will be in Toulouse. In both cities the concert programmes will feature Dmitry Shostakovich’s Twelfth Symphony and Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. 

The tour comes to anbsp;close on 13 March in Switzerland with a Stravinsky evening at the Grand Théâtre featuring performances of the Firebird and Oedipus Rex with Gérard Depardieu.