On 27 November for the first time at the Concert Hall soloists of the Mariinsky Academy of Young Opera Singers directed by Larisa Gergieva will present Mikhail Kollontai's opera The Captain's Daughter after the tale by Alexander Pushkin (concert performance). The Mariinsky Orchestra will be conducted by Zaurbek Gugkaev.
The Captain's Daughter is the one and only operatic work by Mikhail Kollontai; it was commissioned by the Bolshoi Theatre to mark two centuries since the birth of Alexander Pushkin, but a Moscow production never took place. The composer, who also took on the role of the librettist, describes the genre of his work as a "mystically realistic comedy, or even a satire", and stresses that the tale was signifigantly rethought, and the "relationships between the characters are very altered and not at all so synonymous as with the classic author." In the libretto Pushkin's original text is interspersed with the poet's verse in Russian and French, folk songs, and in the epilogue there is the anthem Let the Thunder of Victory Sound! , while the "subversive paper" and Pugachov's aria are based on actual edicts of the pretender.
Mikhail Kollontain came in person to St Petersburg to attend rehearsals and the premiere of his work at the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre.
The opera The Captain's Daughter forms part of the subscription Pushkin. At the Mariinsky Theatre and the Mariinsky II there will also be performances of the operas Ruslan and Lyudmila by Mikhail Glinka (11 February) and Boris Godunov by Modest Musorgsky (14 March) and the ballets The Fountain of Bakhchisarai by Boris Asafiev (29 January) and The Bronze Horseman by Reinhold Glière (15 May).
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