Highlights of the  anniversary Stars

The maestro informed journalists of the  most salient points of the  anniversary festival’s programme.

In particular, Gergiev drew the  attention of the  press to the  premiere of Graham Vick’s production of Modest Musorgsky’s opera Boris Godunov which opens this year’s festival on 25 May. “It was the  Mariinsky Theatre that gave life to this work. Both audiences and musicians demand it. Nowadays it can be read in new ways and be brought up-to-date, perhaps from a new standpoint reflecting Musorgsky’s outstanding musical discoveries as well as things from our own time. Graham Vick is a British stage director with an absolutely vast amount of experience. In Russia twenty-one years ago, he staged a production of Prokofiev’s War and Peace for the  first time at the  Mariinsky Theatre,” Gergiev remarked. “The lead role in the  new production will be performed by Yevgeny Nikitin, and I have all manner of imaginable as well as unimaginable reasons to respect and love him as a younger colleague. Over the  past twelve years he has accomplished some tremendous work. It was not by chance that he was chosen for the  lead role in Der Fliegende Holländer in Bayreuth, the  greatest Wagnerian ‘player’ in the  world. Yevgeny has also proved to be the  bridge that links Musorgsky’s original ideas with the  view held by stage director Vick, our contemporary – who, apropos, does not live in Russia.”

The maestro recalled his first experience of working on this piece by Musorgsky when he was Boris Pokrovsky’s assistant at the  Kirov Theatre. “Moreover, I worked with Johannes Schaaf in 1991, who at the  time was widely regarded as one of the  greatest directors in Europe. One such powerful work was Boris – a short version – and I believed in that version. This work by Musorgsky was created as a forerunner of the  most interesting and witty cinema films to emerge in the  20th century. And Graham Vick works in a marvellously cinematic way.”

Anothe r festival highlight will be Daniele Finzi Pasca’s staging of Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem (20 – 22 June), which preceded anothe r stunning Verdi premiere at last year’s Stars – the  opera Aida which was staged especially for the  Concert Hall. The maestro stressed that the  Requiem is “a work that is a continuation of the  composer’s operatic cycle. Some even consider it to be Verdi’s finest opera. But, on the  othe r hand, this is a vast and subjective space, a world of imagination and fear and of which we know nothing; we will never know what separates this world from death, though the  composer was able to speak about this in a totally unique language.”

At the  end of the  meeting the  maestro once again drew attention to the  New Horizons festival which runs this year for the  fifth time. “This year we are trying to give this festival maximum exposure and to give it some resonance by including it in the  programme of the  anniversary Stars. This time we will be presenting a broad range of works by Alexander Raskatov. Othe r composers we will be performing include Kancheli, Tishchenko, Lutosławski, Dutilleux and Cage. It is great news that the  Jaani Kirik Estonian church has entered the  orbit of our festival.”