On 24 March at the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre soloists of the Academy of Young Singers and the Mariinsky Orchestra under the baton of Valery Gergiev will present a concert performance of Rodion Shchedrin’s opera Not Love Alone.
Not Love Alone was Rodion Shchedrin’s first opera, written in 1961 and dedicated to Maya Plisetskaya. The basis of Vasily Katanian’s libretto came from the story Aunt Lusha by Soviet author Sergei Antonov which narrates post-war life. The young composer structured his opus on limerick-like melodies, several of which became concert pieces in their own right. For example, Varvara’s Song and Limericks were performed by the great Irina Arkhipova and Tamara Sinyavskaya. The music itself of the opera acquired a second life in the form of a symphony suite created in 1964.
“The production of my opera at the Bolshoi Theatre resulted in severe irritation from the bosses in charge of culture – the openly Freudian motifs together with the monumental patriotic processions of other Soviet operas, red banners and glorification proved to be too much of a challenging contrast. The planned next four performances were replaced with Verdi’s La traviata, and it was only two months later that the opera was shown to the public another three times after which it quietly and ingloriously vanished from the repertoire,” says Rodion Shchedrin.
The opera Not Love Alone may also be heard at the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre on 30 March.
Rodion Shchedrin and the Mariinsky Theatre enjoy a close working relationship that dates back many years. Here most of his operas have been staged as well as three of his five ballets and there are regular performances of his concert music. Especially for the opening of the Mariinsky-II the composer was commissioned to write the opera The Lefthander, And in December 2015 came the premiere of Shchedrin’s new opera A Christmas Tale, which was dedicated to Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Theatre.
It should be noted that during the anniversary XV Moscow Easter Festival, which runs from 1 to 17 May 2016, the Mariinsky Orchestra under Valery Gergiev will be appearing in twenty-one Russian towns and cities – Tula, Oryol, Kursk, Smolensk, Vladimir, Moscow, Kazan, Yekaterinburg, Magnitogorsk, Perm, Votkinsk, Izhevsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Lipetsk, Voronezh, Rostov-on-Don, Sochi, Krasnodar, Vladikavkaz, Astrakhan and Saransk.
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