In February the Mariinsky Academy of Young Opera Singers directed by Larisa Gergieva will present two premieres.
On 9 February at the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre there will be a premiere of Joseph Haydn's rarely-performed opera L'isola disabitata directed by Alexei Smirnov (at the Mariinsky Theatre he has staged Grigory Frid's mono-opera Letters of Van Gogh). The production conductor will be Javad Tagi-zade, Artistic Director of the Baku Sinfonietta Orchestra.
The libretto of this "theatre performance" about Europeans on a small island known only to pirates was written by the Italian Pietro Metastasio in 1752. It was roughly at that time that the poet met Joseph Haydn, who, however, was only the nineteenth composer to write an opera based on this plot. L'isola disabitata is an opera that is simultaneously aristocratic and experimentalist. Haydn utterly rejected secco recitatives in favour of the unbroken sound of the orchestra, there is no chorus in the opera and there is just one ensemble (a quartet). However, the composer compensated for this "poverty" by writing solos for the orchestra's musicians. Thus the violin precedes Costanza's song, the cello that of Gernando, the young Silvia is "brought into" the flute ensemble and Enrico is left with the bassoon.
Production Director Alexei Smirnov says that "I really liked Metastasio's libretto. His themes are not anchored to any one specific age. Love, fidelity, treachery and duty – all of these are themes that touch everyone at all times. The powerful and universal emotions laid out in the libretto are expressed in the brilliant music. Whether the hero abandons his beloved on a desert islant or in a supermarket aisle is not so very important, the experience of suffering treachery has been the same throughout the ages. So, for me, L'isola disabitata is not about a tropical island in the ocean, but about the human psyche, not about a sea voyage but about a voyage into the subconscious."
On 18 February (12.00 and 15.00) the Prokofiev Hall (Mariinsky II) will host the premiere of the opera for young audiences The Adventures of Kintaro. The composer is a young writer and soloist of the Mariinsky Academy of Young Opera Singers - Rustam Sagdiev. Sagdiev's first work in the genre of opera was The Turnip, presented at the Prokofiev Hall in 2016. In his new opus, the composer has turned to a Japanese epic, basing the opera on motifs taken from an ancient tale.
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