Interviews

Dear visitors,
From May 26, 2022 all vehicle traffic will be closed on Glinka Street and Theatre Square. The temporary restrictions are imposed due to reconstruction works on the St Petersburg Conservatory. They are expected to last until November 13, 2023.
Please choose other routes when planning your visit to the theatre. We’re sorry for the inconvenience.

The Mariinsky’s Stars of the White Nights International Music Festival directed by Valery Gergiev will be held from May 24 to July 17, in St Petersburg for the thirtieth time. The program is going to be published in installments; as of today, there is a playbill up until June 13 available on the website.

The anniversary festival opens with Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake and Sergei Prokofiev's epic opera War and Peace staged by Andrei Konchalovsky. Traditionally, the playbill features a lot of works by Wagner. The tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen, the operas Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Lohengrin, Tannhäuser and Parsifal are planned to be performed.

Valery Gergiev will also pay tribute to the music of the French romantic Hector Berlioz whose operas Les Troyens and Benvenuto Cellini will be presented at the festival. They are dedicated to the 175^th anniversary of the composer's historical tour in Russia. During the festival, it will be possible to see all this season’s new titles in the repertoire including Rossini's La Cenerentola and L’italiana in Algeri, Mozart's Idomeneo, re di Creta and Ponchielli's La Gioconda. World opera stars and leading Russian singers will be taking part in the performances.

The playbill of the festival is as always full of surprises. As for premieres, Mariinsky has already announced a new production of Boris Tishchenko's ballet The Twelve (July 14, Mariinsky-2). The production will be directed and choreographed by Alexander Sergeev together with the designer Leonid Alekseev (costumes and scenography), Konstantin Binkin (lighting), Ekaterina Kondaurova (assistant choreographer and one of the leading dancers). This is Mariinsky's second approach to this score, the first production of the ballet The Twelve being staged in 1964 by Leonid Yakobson.

The playbill is also to feature an evening in honor of ballet teacher Lyubov Kunakova and a joint benefit performance by principal dancers Victoria Tereshkina and Vladimir Shklyarov. In June, there will be graduation performances of the Vaganova ballet academy at the historical stage.

There is a usual abundance of concert programs. In the first week of the festival Nikolai Lugansky is expected to have a solo recital. Also, there will be another festival within the festival - a series of concerts entitled Brass of the White Nights, dedicated to brass instruments. It can be assumed that the laureates of the first Rachmaninoff Competition held this summer in Moscow will be invited to perform at the Mariinsky. Numerous concerts and semi-staged opera performances will take place in the Rachmaninoff Chamber Hall.

The 30^th Stars of the White Nights International Music Festival is supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation. The artistic director of the festival is Valery Gergiev.

A new version of The Afternoon of a Faun, set to Debussy's famous symphonic prelude, will soon premiere at the Mariinsky. In 1912, Vaslav Nijinsky staged a ballet under this title for the Russian Seasons. The new production of The Faun was commissioned to choreographer Maxim Petrov on the occasion of Diaghilev's 150 anniversary. The ballet will be presented on the Mariinsky historical stage on April 23, alongside Mikhail Fokine's Scheherazade, Le spectre de la Rose and The Swan, conducted by Valery Gergiev.

“This ballet shows portraits of several people, our contemporaries, who do not resemble each other,” Maxim Petrov comments. There are to be five characters, each exploring the possibilities of their own body. Artists of different generations will be involved in this production, as was the case with "Russian Dead Ends-II", one of the choreographer’s latest works.

Graduate of the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet, choreographer Maxim Petrov has staged, among others, the one-act ballets The King's Divertissement, Russian Overture, Russian Dead Ends-II at the Mariinsky Theatre. Last season he created a three-act performance "Renard. Mavra. Fairy's Kiss", nominated for the Golden Mask theatre award in eight categories. In June, he is making his debut as an opera director with a production of Bellini's Norma at the Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre.

Opened in June 2021, the Rachmaninov Hall provides new opportunities for the musicians of the orchestra, choir, and singers. Performing chamber music is a very special area of ​​music-making that calls for appropriate acoustic conditions, an atmosphere of “a home”.

The Rachmaninov Hall is located in the southern building of the Concert Hall at Pisareva, 20 (entrance from Dekabristov st., 37). The hall is designed to welcome 166 guests. The venue has been intended for chamber concerts given both by young musicians and eminent virtuosos, as well as for choral and children's programs. The interiors are decorated in the same colors as the main stage, and Yasuhisa Toyota, who also worked on the Concert Hall, helped design the acoustics. The hall is equipped with a Steinway & Sons grand piano.

The brand-new Mariinsky venue has been building its repertoire and is soon to awe the audience.

Dear Guests,
Part of the playbill for March has been published – tickets to performances and concerts this month are now available at box-offices and on the theatre’s website.

OPERA
In line with tradition, Maslenitsa Week (Shrovetide) at the Mariinsky Theatre will see Rimsky-Korsakov’s springtime tale The Snow Maiden performed. At the historic theatre, there will be a performance of Musorgsky’s Boris Godunov with Yevgeny Nikitin and Ekaterina Semenchuk in the lead roles. Over the course of the first few days of March, audiences may also see and hear the latest additions to the repertoire – productions of the operas Benvenuto Cellini, Lakmé and Les Contes d’Hoffmann. There will be a semi-concert performance of Mozart’s Idomeneo.

BALLET
At the historic theatre there is to be an evening of one-act opuses by Alexei Ratmansky including the refined Seven Sonatas, a premiere from last season. Fans of the classical repertoire will be able to attend Giselle, La Sylphide and Don Quixote. Choreography from the 20^th century is represented on the playbill by Bronislava Nijinska’s Les Noces and Leonid Lavrovsky’s production of Romeo and Juliet. The repertoire also includes Ratmansky’s Cinderella and ballets by young Russian choreographers – Vladimir Varnava’s Daphnis et Chloé and Ilya Zhivoi’s Seasons.

CONCERTS
At the new Rachmaninoff Chamber Hall on 6 March there will be a programme of works written by musicians of the Mariinsky Orchestra – Eduard Kiprsky, Alexei Krasheninnikov, Alexei Pozin and Vartan Gnoro. The concert series Legends of the Kirov-Mariinsky Theatre will continue to run. Celebratory programmes for 8 March (International Women’s Day) are being rehearsed by the Mariinsky Stradivarius Ensemble and the Mariinsky Brass Ensemble.

The Mariinsky Theatre is taking its grandiose production of Richard Wagner’s opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen to Moscow. The four parts – Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung – are to be performed under the baton of Valery Gergiev on 11, 23 and 24 March and 17 April at the  “Zaryadye” concert hall.

The Mariinsky Theatre was and remains the only theatre in Russia at which it is possible to see and hear the composer’s opus in its entirety. The first Ring at the theatre in St Petersburg was presented between 1900 and 1905 under the leadership of the legendary conductor Eduard Nápravník. The current production is a repertoire project of Valery Gergiev.

The acclaimed Russian-American artist and designer George Tsypin gave the production of the Ring a cosmic scale and co-ordinates outside time itself, returning Wagner’s opus to the land of myth and legend. The principal image conceived by Tsypin is the mica giants, similar to the idols from a temple. They silently contemplate the drama of gods, Valkyries and earthly beings.

The Mariinsky’s Der Ring des Nibelungen has toured to immense triumph throughout America, Europe and Asia and has received great acclaim in Wagner’s native land – in Germany, where critics noted the high level of musical performance and the originality of the set designs.

Over slightly more than two decades, in St Petersburg Valery Gergiev has succeeded in establishing a truly Wagnerian orchestra and a plethora of star Wagnerian singers, since at the Mariinsky Der Ring des Nibelungen is performed by the resident company. Appearing on-stage at the “Zaryadye” concert hall in Moscow are Yevgeny Nikitin (Wotan, Gunther), Yuri Vorobiev (Wotan), Roman Burdenko (Alberich), Mikhail Vekua (Siegmund, Siegfried, Loge), Elena Stikhina (Sieglinde, Brünnhilde), Tatiana Pavlovskaya (Brünnhilde) and Mikhail Petrenko (Hagen, Hunding, Fafner). The complete cast lists will be published on the concert hall’s website.

For those intending to attend all four operas, the organisers are offering the opportunity to purchase a subscription.

For two days in a row, on 24 and 25 February, the Mariinsky Theatre is to perform at the “Zaryadye” concert hall. The ballet company will be taking new choreography to Moscow – works by Maxim Petrov, Vladimir Varnava, Alexander Sergeyev and Polina Mitryashina, while the Stradivarius Ensemble will present a programme of opuses by Haydn and Piazzolla. The concert will feature guest cellist Jonathan Roseman.

The evening of contemporary choreography on 24 February titled Emotions and Dances comprises works by young choreographers who have made names for themselves as part of  the Mariinsky Theatre’s Creative Workshop. The first half includes Le Bœuf sur le toit – an “infernal divertissement” by Vladimir Varnava. Here he has taken a score by Frenchman Darius Milhaud, composed for the shocking Paris production by Jean Cocteau in 1920. In the new version, Varnava places characters upon the stage who are from Mexican folklore – the “Christmas devil” El Diablo (Vasily Tkachenko) and Madame Death (Zlata Yalinich).

Also being taken to “Zaryadye” is  the chamber ballet Russian Dead-Ends – II by Maxim Petrov and Nastasia Khrushcheva, which was awarded the Golden Mask last year. The creators define Dead-Ends as a ballet manifesto in which music and dance formulas of a Russian cultural matrix are confirmed. The composer performs his “new salon music” on the stage, and two pairs of soloists – Nadezhda Batoeva and Konstantin Zverev and Elena Androsova and Vasily Shcherbakov – perform their dialogues in which a story of hopeless love may be read.

That same evening, there will be performances of Polina Mitryashina’s miniature Quiet to music by Alexander Karpov and Alexander Sergeyev’s piece At the Wrong Time. The protagonists of Quiet are a couple of newly-weds who speak of their emotions through the interference of life in a communal flat. The musical basis for At the Wrong Time, staged for three dancers, came from pieces for piano by Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos.

The Stradivarius Ensemble regularly performs at “Zaryadye” under the baton of violinist Lorenz Nasturica-Herschcowici. On 25 February the ensemble will be taking a programme to Moscow that comprises “serious” and “light” music. In the first half, there will be a performance of Haydn’s Farewell Symphony and his Symphony Concertante with solo oboe (Alexei Fyodorov), bassoon (Rodion Tolmachov), violin (Lorenz Nasturica-Herschcowici) and cello (Jonathan Roseman). In the second half of the programme the musicians will be performing popular tangos by Astor Piazzolla transcribed by Leonid Desyatnikov and Alexei Krasheninnikov.

Mariinsky Theatre soloists are rehearsing Gioachino Rossini’s dramma giocoso La Cenerentola – on 22 and 23 February it will be performed at the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre. Anna Goryacheva has been invited to perform as Angelina (Cenerentola), having sung the role in Vienna in January.

Rossini’s La Cenerentola is not in the Mariinsky Theatre’s standing repertoire. Several years ago it was featured in subscription concerts of the Mariinsky Academy of Young Opera Singers – with Irina Shishkova and Regina Rustamova in the title role. Somewhat earlier, in the 1990s, the role was sung at the Mariinsky by Olga Borodina. Finding a performer for the role of Angelina (as Rossini’s librettist Jacopo Ferretti called the heroine), written for a coloratura mezzo-soprano, is something of a difficult task.

The greater the challenge – to assemble a team of soloists for the other roles: they, like the heroine, as the action unfolds must demonstrate a relaxed command of bel canto in the solo parts and join in the filigree crowd ensembles with the typical Rossini tongue-twisters, passages and “crescendos”. For this performance, the theatre has brought together the forces of the Academy and the Mariinsky Opera, both experienced and young talents. The premiere of La Cenerentola took place in 1817 at the Teatro Valle in Rome. The abundance of enchanting melodies, magnificent ensembles and hugely diverse arias rendered it popular well beyond Italy’s borders. A canonical production in the 20^th century came from the French stage director Jean-Pierre Ponnelle (screened in 1981). At the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre La Cenerentola is to be semi-staged.

The list of soloists rehearsing the lead roles may be accessed on the theatre website.

From 17 to 21 March 2022, for the sixth time the Mariinsky Theatre will be hosting the international festival Virtuosi of the Flute, dedicated to the art of performing this instrument. At the Concert Hall and the Rachmaninoff Hall there will be performances of solo flute, as well as accompanied by the piano and in ensembles with other instruments and together with a full orchestra. The festival programme includes music ranging from the Renaissance to the present day, with several premieres planned.

The festival is united under the umbrella of “Teacher and Student” – many of the participants have studied under each other, they themselves now passing on their skills to subsequent generations, and at the festival they will be appearing onstage together.

At the Concert Hall there will be opening and closing concerts for the festival (17 and 21 March respectively, with the Mariinsky Orchestra), as well as an evening of chamber ensembles with the flute (19 March). There are to be two festival concerts at the Rachmaninoff Hall. The evening of 18 March will be dedicated to Alexandra Vavilina-Mravinskaya, a legendary flautist who for many years performed in the orchestra of Yevgeny Mravinsky. Appearing onstage will be her students from over the years. On 19 March, a younger audience and their parents may look forward to the concert The Flute of the King featuring music by the great flautist Johann Joachim Quantz and his royal pupil Frederick II, the Great, King of Prussia, alongside an engaging narrative about them.