On 25, 26 and 27 December at the Mariinsky-II there will be a premiere of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera The Golden Cockerel by stage director Anna Matison. On 25 and 26 December Valery Gergiev will be conducting.
The Golden Cockerel was the last of the composer’s fifteen operas and, arguably, the most mysterious. Both Pushkin’s text and Rimsky-Korsakov’s music have led to different interpretations and readings. Following the appearance of the opera in 1907, tsarist censorship saw the work ridiculing the Emperor. The last year of the composer’s life was marked by a struggle with the censors, and so the opera was only performed after Rimsky-Korsakov’s death. In 1909 The Golden Cockerel was staged in two theatres at the same time: at the Zimin Private Opera, in which the action unfolded outside of any specific time with designer Ivan Bilibin stylising the sets and the costumes after cheap prints, and at the Bolshoi Theatre, where with the help of designer Konstantin Korovin the opera was an intensely coloured spectacle in the style of “fantasy realism”.
It was difficult to get away from the political subtexts in the opera, although at times these were sought even where they do not exist.
The production by Diaghilev’s company in 1914 proved a scandal in Paris with Michel Fokine and Alexandre Benois on the production team.
The opera was first staged at the Mariinsky in 1919. The political background had altered, and then in The Golden Cockerel the satire of the aristocracy was underlined. The production designer was Konstantin Korovin. Many years later, in 2003 the opera once again returned to the Mariinsky in a production by Paris’ Théâtre du Châtelet staged by Kabuki actor and director в Ennosuke Ichikawa.
Alexander Pushkin’s text presents many riddles, almost grotesque in its irony, as does Rimsky-Korsakov’s music. The composer called to his opera as a “fable in faces”, a reference to Russian folk genres of tales, jesters and folkloric parodies. Each production director tries, in their own way, to get to the root of the mystery of this fable and find their own meanings in it.
Young stage director Anna Matison who is staging The Golden Cockerel at the Mariinsky-II is working in the genre for the first time. Anna Matison’s previous works include art, documentary and short films, productions in drama theatre (Moscow Chekhov Art Theatre, Lermontov Theatre in Kazakhstan, Sică Alexandrescu in Romania). Among Matison’s creative interests, music and the Mariinsky Theatre occupy a special place in her heart; the theatre’s orchestra was the protagonist of her film about the Moscow Easter Festival During the Journey. She has also filmed opera films of such Mariinsky Theatre productions as The Lefthander, Semyon Kotko and Les Troyens.
Speaking of The Golden Cockerel, Anna Matison underlines the significance of Rimsky-Korsakov’s music – for her, the music is the main background in her production of the opera. At the same time, the stage director sees the fairy-tale qualities of the opera and is directing her production to a family audience: “For children we are staging a plot about a princess in a fairy-tale land, while adults should see a story about women with power. When absolutely every man dies – young and old, wise and foolish – this tells us that a woman’s power is unlimited.”
Working on the production are: Anna Matison (Stage Director, Production Designer and Costume Designer), Sergei Novikov (Production Designer), Alexander Sivaev (Lighting Designer), Andrei Petrenko (Principal Chorus Master), Larisa Gergiva (Musical Preparation), Maxim Petrov (Choreographer) and Valery Gergiev (Musical Director and Conductor).
The roles are being rehearsed by: Sergei Aleksashkin, Vladimir Feliauer and Edward Tsanga (Tsar Dodon), Andrei Serov and Denis Begansky (General Polkan), Aida Garifulina, Olga Pudova and Antonina Vesenitsa (the Queen of Shemakha), Larisa Diadkova, Elena Vitman and Zlata Bulycheva (Amelfa), Vladislav Sulimsky, Alexander Gerasimov and Yaroslav Petryanik (Afron), Alexander Trofimov, Ilya Selivanov and Andrei Ilyushnikov (Gvidon), Andrei Popov, Stanislav Leontiev and Artyom Melikhov (the Astrologer) and Kira Loginova, Yekaterina Krasko and Anna Shulgina (the Cockerel).
TV news channels and photographers please note:
TV news channels and photographers are invited to the full dress rehearsal of the opera The Golden Cockerel on 24 December at 19:00. At 18:30 there will be a press-conference with the opera’s stage director Anna Matison.
Entry for the press – 24 December at 18:15, Mariinsky-II (main entrance).
members of the press must be accredited.
Applications will be accepted until 15:00 on 24 December.
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