2 December marked eighty years since the birth of St Petersburg composer Sergei Banevich. To commemorate the musician’s anniversary birthday, on Saturday 4 December at the historic Mariinsky Theatre there will be a performance of his opera The Story of Kai and Gerda.
A key place in the music of Sergei Banevich is occupied by works for musical theatre aimed at children and young people. He is the composer of the children’s operas and ballets White Is the Lonely Sail, Ferdinand the Magnificent, The Story of Kai and Gerda, The Town in the Snuffbox, Thumbelina and The Little Match Girl among numerous others. The chamber music venues of the Mariinsky-II have presented his opuses Murych the Cat, The Brave Hare, An Opera about Porridge, a Cat and Milk and Scenes from the Life of Nikolenka Irtenev while the man stage has seen The Story of Kai and Gerda.
The opera The Story of Kai and Gerda based on motifs from Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen is one of Sergei Banevich’s most famous works. It is performed at the Bolshoi and Mariinsky Theatres and in Novosibirsk and Samara. The opera was first performed at the Kirov (today the Mariinsky) Theatre in 1980. The first production had over one hundred performances, and it subsequently returned to the repertoire in 1996 — at that time, the role of Gerda was performed by a young Anna Netrebko. Five years ago, the Mariinsky Theatre again set its sights on The Story of Kai and Gerda, with Alexei Stepanyuk appearing as the Stage Director. “This opera is meant equally both for children and for adults, it deals with loss and finding oneself, just like in instructive novels,” contemplates the composer.
On 4 December the lead roles are to be performed by soloists of the Mariinsky Academy of Young Opera Singers: Igor Barbakov (Kai), Anzhelika Minasova (Gerda), Anna Matis (the Snow Queen), Vyacheslav Kozlovsky (the Lamplighter), Denis Begansky (a Chieftain) and Elena Gorlo (a Little Bandit).
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