On 24 and 28 October at the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre Valery Gergiev will be conducting the first premiere of the 2019-20 season – Claude Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande. The Stage Director, Costume Designer and Set Designer, in collaboration with Marsel Kalmagambetov, is Anna Matison.
Of the more than ten opera projects that Claude Debussy seriously considered, he completed only one – Pelléas et Mélisande. The work based on the eponymous play by Maurice Maeterlinck was completed in 1895, but attempts to stage it did not meet with immediate success. In 1902 the premiere took place at the Opéra Comique under André Messager. At that time, the score's lack of songs and dances, choruses and ensembles, its undertones and its extremely precise reproduction, which had concerned the composer, left audiences perplexed. But, with time, appreciation of the work grew, and for French people this opera by Claude Debussy became a matter of national pride. In Russia Pelléas et Mélisande was first presented in 1915 at the Petrograd Theatre of Musical Drama and then was not performed again in St Petersburg for almost a century. It was only in 2012 that the Mariinsky Theatre turned to it, offering a production by Stage Director Daniel Kramer.
In October at the Mariinsky Theatre several acclaimed ensembles will be appearing. On 5 October at the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre there will be a concert by the World Orchestra for Peace conducted by Valery Gergiev. This unique ensemble, which gives just a few performances each year, comprises musicians from seventy orchestras from more than forty countries. It was founded in 1995 by the famed conductor Sir Georg Solti, and in 1997 Valery Gergiev took over at the helm.
On 20 October at the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre as part of the festival International Conservatoire Week there will be the St Petersburg premiere of British composer Oliver Knussen's opera Where the Wild Things Are (1983), written after motifs from the eponymous children's book by American author and artist Maurice Sendak. The concert version of the work will present festival guests – the Shadwell Opera (London). On 26 October at the Concert Hall there will also be a closing concert of the XIX International Conservatoire Week festival.
On 21 October at the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre there will be a performance by the orchestra musicAeterna under its Artistic Director Teodor Currentzis. Founded in 2004, today the orchestra musicAeterna is one of the most popular ensembles in the field of authentic performance. The orchestra's recordings, released on Sony Classical, receive prestigious music prizes and awards each year.
From 11 to 19 October at the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre the International Organ Festival will take place for the seventh time. This year's participants include musicians from Russia, France, Austria and Italy, many of whom will be performing for the first time at the Mariinsky Theatre. At the festival the organ will host solo and duet performances, together with piano and orchestra, and the concert programmes will feature transcriptions, improvisations and classics from the organ repertoire. The festival will celebrate the tenth anniversary of the organ's inauguration at the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre.
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