On 1 June as part of the XXVII Stars of the White Nights Music Festival the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre will host a premiere of Richard Wagner's opera Tannhäuser conducted by Valery Gergiev. The Mariinsky Theatre has invited stage director Vyacheslav Starodubtsev and set designer Pyotr Okunev to work on the new production, both having brilliantly assimilated the space of the Concert Hall for two recent opera premieres – Mozart and Salieri and Kashchey the Immortal.
Roles are being rehearsed by:
Tannhäuser: Mikhail Vekua, Sergei Skorokhodov, Avgust Amonov
Elisabeth: Mlada Khudoley, Yekaterina Shimanovich, Anastasia Schegoleva, Irina Churilova, Micaela di Catalano
Venus: Anna Markarova, Yulia Matochkina, Tatiana Pavlovskaya
Wolfram von Eschinbach: Yevgeny Nikitin, Roman Burdenko, Vladislav Kupriyanov, Pavel Yankovsky
Hermann: Ilya Bannik, Pavel Shmulevich, Dmitry Grigoriev
Walther von der Vogelweide: Roman Arndt, Oleg Balashov, Stanislav Leontiev
Richard Wagner's works occupy a special place in the repertoire of the Mariinsky Theatre – here almost all of the composer's mature operas are performed, beginning with Der Fliegende Holländer and ending with Parsifal. It was at the Mariinsky Theatre that the Russian premiere of Tannhäuser took place in 1874, and for many years prior to the Russian Revolution it was consistently performed, with regular revivals. For the last time before a lengthy interruption, Tannhäuser was staged in 1923, following which it vanished for many a long year, appearing only in concert form.
For the new production, of all the various music editions of Tannhäuser, the Mariinsky Theatre has chosen the Dresden version. The opera is being staged by Vyacheslav Starodubtsev, Principal Stage Director of the Novosibirsk State Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre, who has created unusual productions with intriguing genre definitions. Not for the first time, his team includes the set designer Pyotr Okunev who works at the Primorsky Stage of the Mariinsky Theatre and designer Zhanna Usacheva who has created the costumes for the St Petersburg premiere.
"There is nothing more monumental than Wagner, but Wagner is interesting precisely for his combination of mythological scale and actual emotional structure, which is something close to everyone. For me it is very important to highlight this emotional structure, and the most important thing is for it to match with and be a continuation of the composer's musical dramaturgy. The visual side of things should also support this musical dramaturgy. I want to create such a production that, whatever the costumes and sets, it remains relevant. And so for me it is very important to work with the performers, having a detailed analysis of the images and the history of the opera's creation. We are rehearsing very intently with the Mariinsky Theatre performers, immersing ourselves in this great, this unique material," Vyacheslav Starodubtsev has remarked about the production.
Premiere performances of Tannhäuser under Valery Gergiev will also take place at the Concert Hall on 16 and 29 June.
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