On 4 July the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre will host a concert performance of Alexander von Zemlinsky's rarely performed opera Der Zwerg. The vocal roles will be performed by soloists and the ensemble of the Mariinsky Academy of Young Opera Singers, directed by Larisa Gergieva. Leon Botstein will be conducting the Mariinsky Orchestra.
Of Alexander von Zemlinsky's eight operas Der Zwerg (1919-1921) is one of the two most popular. The other is Eine Florentinische Tragödie (1916). Both one-act operas have libretti based on works by Oscar Wilde. Since the 1980s when Alexander von Zemlinsky's works, all but forgotten in the mid 20th century, gradually began to appear once more on concert hall and opera house playbills, these two operas are often performed as a diptych. At the Mariinsky Theatre it has been separated for almost two decades; Eine Florentinische Tragödie was performed at the Stars of the White Nights festival in 1999, and now Der Zwerg is being performed in St Petersburg for the first time. It was proposed that the festival programme should include it by Leon Botstein, an American conductor, Director of the American Symphony Orchestra, President of Bard College, respected music historian and editor of the long-established magazine The Musical Quarterly. At previous festivals he has conducted Sergei Taneyev's Oresteia and Leonard Bernstein's Candide.
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