The first premiere of the Stars of the White Nights festival at the Mariinsky Theatre will be Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's opera The Maid of Orleans, to be presented on 28 May. Alexei Stepanyuk is the production's Stage Director, Vyacheslav Okunev the Set and Costume Designer and Valery Gergiev the Music Director and Conductor. The role of Joan of Arc is being rehearsed by acclaimed opera stars Ekaterina Semenchuk, Ekaterina Gubanova, Yulia Matochkina and Ekaterina Sannikova. The first performances will take place at the Mariinsky II on 28 and 29 May and on 1, 12 and 18 June.
The Maid of Orleans is something of a repertoire rarity; there are, indeed, scant examples of it having been staged. The most recent production of the opera at the Mariinsky Theatre came in 1945 with the legendary Sofia Preobrazhenskaya in the lead role. Tchaikovsky's most monumental and ambitious opera, The Maid of Orleans was composed in the spirit of French "grand opéra". There are heartfelt and stunning arias, magnificent ensembles, choruses of angels and of men, prayers, triumphant processions, the ubiquitous ballet, thunderclaps, battles and tongues of fire in the music of the finale.
"We are not staging an historic opera 'about knights', but rather a romantic opera – even a metaphysical one," says stage director Alexei Stepanyuk of the production. "Fire is the entire production's leitmotif, a symbol of all-consuming flame in which everything perishes – our whole world, with its madness of wars and hatred, the madness of pseudo-moralistic values. And, with her saintly smile, the Maid of Orleans towers above these flames." In the director's vision, the destructive power of fire is contrasted with divine and heavenly light: though Joan initially flees from it, she subsequently follows it.
Preparations for this production were commenced last season. In August 2020 the opera was performed in its entirety in concert under Valery Gergiev and featured Ekaterina Semenchuk in the lead role. The production is being rehearsed by the company's leading soloists, among them Elena Stikhina and Irina Churilova (Agnès Sorel), Roman Burdenko and Alexei Markov (Lionel), Sergei Skorokhodov, Sergei Semishkur and Alexander Mikhailov (Charles VII), Vladislav Sulimsky (Dunois), Stanislav Trofimov and Mikhail Petrenko (the Archbishop) and Yevgeny Nikitin (Thibaut d'Arc). Irina Soboleva is responsible for the production's musical preparation, the chorus master is Konstantin Rylov and the choreographer is Ilya Ustyantsev.
General information:
The Maid of Orleans was composed in 1878–1879, between Eugene Onegin and Mazepa. The libretto based on Vasily Zhukovsky's translation of Schiller's play was compiled by the composer himself (Giuseppe Verdi also turned to Schiller's drama, writing his own Giovanna d'Arco in 1845). The opera's premiere took place during Tchaikovsky's lifetime at the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre on 13 February 1881. The next production at the Mariinsky Theatre (then already the Kirov Theatre) was mounted in 1945 by the conductor Boris Khaikin, the director Ilya Shlepyanov and the designer Vladimir Dmitriev.
| user_name | | Exit |
