The Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre will host the world premiere of Eclipse by the modern composer Alexander Raskatov on 28 June. The opera is dedicated to the Muraviev-Apostol family and Valery Gergiev, who will also conduct the premiere performance.
Alexander Raskatov explains: ‘In 2011, on the recommendation of Valery Gergiev, Christopher Muraviev-Apostol asked me to write an opera. He is a remote descendant of one of the five executed Decembrists and wanted me to write an opera about the events of those days. The opera was created to be performed by the Mariinsky Theatre under the baton of Valery Gergiev. The characters often sing in extreme high registers. It helps to create high dramatic tension.’
According to the composer, the opera’s libretto took almost a year to write. The story starts in Paris and ends at the place of the Decembrists’ exile. The composer did not use just one source and had a variety of historical records at his disposal: letters, diaries, contemporaries’ accounts, Russian and French literary sources, such as Velimir Khlebnikov’s texts, excerpts from The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov and The House of the Dead by Fyodor Dostoevsky, poems by Alexander Pushkin and Yevgeny Baratynsky, fragments from Alexandre Dumas’ and other French writers’ works in the original language.
Composer Alexander Raskatov is a graduate of the Moscow Conservatoire (class of Albert Lehman). He is a member of the Russian Union of Composers and the Russian Association of Contemporary Music. He is also Staff Composer of Stetson University (USA). In 1998, Raskatov received the Main Composition Prize at the Salzburg Easter Festival. In 2002, the CD After Mozart, which included a piece by Raskatov played by Gidon Kremer and Kremerata Baltica, won a Grammy award. The composer's discography includes recordings for companies such as Nonesuch (USA), EMI (the UK), BIS (Sweden), Wergo and ESM (Germany), Megadisc (Belgium), Chant du monde (France), and Claves (Switzerland).
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