Monday 9 March will see the release of a new recording of Rodion Shchedrin’s opera The Lefthander on the Mariinsky label featuring soloists of the Mariinsky Opera and the Mariinsky Chorus and Orchestra under Valery Gergiev. The recording was made at the new stage of the Mariinsky Theatre (Mariinsky II) on 27 and 28 June 2013 during the world premiere of the stage version of the opera. The lead roles are performed by Andrei Popov (the Lefthander), Edward Tsanga (Ataman Platov), Vladimir Moroz (Alexander I and Nicholas I), Kristina Alieva (the Flea), Maria Maksakova (Princess Charlotte), Andrei Spekhov (the English Under-Skipper), Alexander Timchenko (Count Kiselvrode) and Yekaterina Goncharova and Varvara Solovyova (Chatting Women).
The opera The Lefthander based on Nikolai Leskov’s novel Lefty was commissioned by the Mariinsky Theatre to mark the opening of the new stage and commemorate Valery Gergiev’s sixtieth birthday. According to the composer, the protagonist of his opus crystallises “the most important and typical features of the national Russian character: original talent, innate wit, self-irony, indifference to human life and a fateful passion for alcohol”, while in the work itself we can observe the “artistic resistance between two forms of life – rational British life and irrational Russian life.”
The recording includes two discs in Super Audio CD format and a booklet with the libretto and information about the cast. The new disc may already be pre-ordered on the label’s official website: http://bit.ly. The discs will be posted on 2 March – one week before the official release. The recording will soon be available to pre-order in iTunes format.
| user_name | | Exit |
