On 1 June, the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre will host one of opera premieres of the Stars of the White Nights festival – Richard Wagner’s Tannhäuser – to be performed under the baton of Valery Gergiev. The production is staged by Vyacheslav Starodubtsev, Principal Director of the Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet Theatre, and Pyotr Okunev, Set Designer, who staged productions of one-act operas by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov Mozart and Salieri and Kashchey the Immortal for the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre in March 2019. Premiere performances of Tannhäuser conducted by Valery Gergiev will also take place on 16 June and 29 June.
The world premiere of Tannhäuser took place at the Königliches Hoftheater (Royal Theatre) in Dresden in October 1845. The new work received mixed reviews and did not stay in the repertoire for very long. Richard Wagner did not deem the opera a good one and revised the finale twice. As a result, there were two versions of the opera – the Paris version, created for the Paris Opéra, and the Dresden version, which is more frequently performed these days. Tannhäuser had its premiere at the Mariinsky Theatre on 18 December 1874 under the baton of Eduard Nápravník. It was staged again 20 years later – in 1893 – but still under the baton of Nápravník. The last production of Tannhäuser at the Mariinsky Theatre was that by Nikolai Petrov in 1923. After Tannhäuser left the repertoire, the opera was performed at the Mariinsky Theatre only in its concert version for almost a hundred years.
The XXVII Stars of the White Nights festival will run from 22 May to 21 July 2019 at all the venues of the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg.
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