The Mariinsky Theatre to screen its 100^th online broadcast

On 10 June mariinsky.tv will be screening its 100^th broadcast in a row. Since 19 March, this is now the twelfth week that the Mariinsky Theatre has been coming on-air each evening, with two programmes being broadcast on Saturdays – a matinee for children and family viewing and an evening broadcast for a winder audience. This centenary online screening will be of a recording of Rodion Shchedrin's opera The Lefthander conducted by Valery Gergiev. The broadcast will be available to view from 19.00 Moscow Time on mariinsky.tv, via the social networking sites VKontakte, Odnoklassniki and Facebook, as well as on the Mariinsky Theatre's YouTube channel. Following the online broadcast the video will remain accessible for twenty-four hours.

Rodion Shchedrin composed the opera The Lefthander following a commission from the Mariinsky Theatre and is dedicated to Valery Gergiev. Staged by Alexei Stepanyuk in July 2013, it was the first premiere produced at the Mariinsky II – just two months after its opening. In The Lefthander the composer again returned to the work of one of his favourite authors, Nikolai Leskov; the basis of the plot is formed around the tale of a talented craftsman from Tula who produces a mechanical flea. The opera, inaugurated at the Mariinsky II, has occupied a special and esteemed position in the theatre's repertoire, and the complex roles in Shchedrin's opus proved to be vocal and acting masterpieces for the first performers. That cast was recorded at the premiere performance in 2013: Andrei Popov (the Lefthander), Edward Tsanga (Ataman Platov), Vladimir Moroz (Alexander I, Nicholas) and Kristina Alieva (the Flea).

Since 19 March, when following the necessary closure of the theatre to the public, mariinsky.tv has produced a series of daily online broadcasts, reaching a total of over 76.7 million hits and the Mariinsky Theatre's online platforms being accessed by users from almost one hundred countries. Over that period, lovers of classical music around the world have had the opportunity to see, at no cost, more than sixty-five events: recordings of the finest operas, ballets, concerts and educational programmes in the theatre's repertoire, as well as the chance "to take part" in the ballet company's classes. The vast majority of viewers following the Mariinsky Theatre's online programmes have been from Russia, although the broadcasts are also proving popular in Japan, the USA, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, the Republic of Korea and Germany.