The Mariinsky Theatre in Rotterdam

At the annual Gergiev Festival in the Netherlands, the Mariinsky Theatre will give a concert performance of one of Giuseppe Verdi’s late masterpieces – the opera Otello. Otello fits in with the theme of the 2012 festival in Rotterdam. The motto of the seventeenth festival is “The Sea and You.” The programme features works dedicated to the changing nature and concerns of the human soul.
During the festival there will also be performances of Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony, Rachmaninoff’s symphonic poem The Isle of the Dead, Gavin Bryars’ The Sinking of the Titanic and works by Wagner, Beethoven, Dvořák and Purcell.

In addition to the impressive cast performing the lead roles in the opera Otello – among them Latvian singer Aleksandrs Antonenko (Otello) and Russia’s Viktoria Yastrebova (Desdemona), Alexei Markov (Iago), Khachatur Badalyan (Cassio) and Zlata Bulycheva (Emilia) – festival audiences will see the chorus of King’s College from Cambridge, French pianist Lise de la Salle and Berlin’s Artemis Quartett as well as having the opportunity to take part in master-classes and “happy endings” in line with tradition.

During the festival, Valery Gergiev will be conducting three times – with the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra and the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra.
The maestro’s collaboration with the Rotterdam Philharmonic began in the 1980s. In 1995 Valery Gergiev was appointed its Principal Conductor, and just one year later the idea to establish a music festival in the Netherlands’ second largest city came to life. The festival in Rotterdam, a twin city to St Petersburg, is important first and foremost in strengthening cultural relations between Russia and the Netherlands, and for seventeen years now its programmes have been familiarising audiences with works by 19^th and 20^th century Russian composers. Striving to expand the scale of the music festival, its organisers also add new names of composers and performers from throughout the world to the playbill each year.

The 2012 Gergiev Festival will run at five venues and last nine days, from 7 to 15 September.