On 25, 26 and 27 December 2014 the Mariinsky-II will be hosting the premiere performances of a new production of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera The Golden Cockerel. In over a hundred years this is just the third production at the Petrograd-Leningrad-St Petersburg Theatre.
The opera was premiered in 1909 in Moscow at the Sergei Zimin Private Russian Opera, and was only staged at the Mariinsky Theatre ten years later in 1919; it was a production in the traditions of Russian fairy-tale opera. More than eighty years later, in 2003 the Mariinsky Theatre together with the Théâtre du Châtelet of Paris presented a kabuki-style project by a Japanese production team as part of a revival of the Saisons russes.
The current production of The Golden Cockerel marks the opera debut of Anna Matison, a playwright, script-writer, film director and producer. In this production she will be appearing as Stage Director and Production and Costume Designer. “In selecting the genre of the fairy-tale,” the stage director says, “I do not intend to experiment with it as a genre. It is a family story: for children it is a merry and vivid tale; for parents it is a wise parable.” The melodious nature, beauty and leitmotifs of the plot will be underscored by the production designs; the opera will use pantomime and masquerades, while the sets will use 3D format video projections.
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