26 March: first-ever performance of Giacomo Puccini’s opera La rondine at the Mariinsky Concert Hall (concert version). Roles are studied by the soloists of the Mariinsky Academy of Young Opera Singers under Larisa Gergieva: Gulnara Shafigullina (soprano), Anna Barkhatova (soprano), Bera Goryunova (soprano), Elena Efremova (soprano), Margarita Ivanova (soprano), Diana Kazarian (soprano), Anna Shulgina (soprano), Elena Gorlo (soprano), Ksenia Grigoryeva (mezzo-soprano), Shota Chibirov (tenor), Nikolai Emtsov (tenor), Ilya Selivanov (tenor), Nikolai Statsyuk (tenor), Igor Chikishev (tenor), Alexander Shagun (tenor), Alexei Bublik (baritone), Yaroslav Petryanik (baritone), Lev Elgast (bass). Zaurbek Gugkaev is to conduct the performance.
La rondine premiered in March 2017 at the Opera Monte-Carlo. Conceived as a Viennese operetta, it resembles Giuseppe Verdi’s La traviata in many aspects. Puccini, renowned as an author of tragic melodramas, contradicted himself a lot as he attempted to create a comedy. The story of La rondine is free of social conflict and plot twists, lacking a typical dramatic finale as well.
The audience was not quick to appreciate the new opera, as it was accustomed to eruption of passion in Puccini’s works. However, there is a number of brilliant musical moments in the score, and some arias are often sung in concerts. La rondine has a long recordings history: there are recordings with Licia Albanese, Anna Moffo, Kiri Te Kanawa and Angela Gheorghiu singing Magda, and Plácido Domingo, José Cura and Roberto Alagna singing Ruggero.
Concert performance of La rondine on 26 March will be the final event of the subscription ‘Our 20th Century’ that included the operas Rothschild’s Violin by Veniamin Fleishman, Siberia by Umberto Giordano, The Dawns Here Are Quiet by Kirill Molchanov, Grigory Melekhov by Ivan Dzerzhinsky, and Dmitry Shostakovich’s song cycle From Jewish Folk Poetry.
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