The XXI Stars of the White Nights international festival

The XXI Stars of the White Nights festival opens with a premiere of Alexander Dargomyzhsky’s opera Rusalka staged by Vasily Barkhatov and designed by Zinovy Margolin under the baton of Valery Gergiev at the Mariinsky-II. The opera will be performed again on 25 May and 28 and 30 June.
The first concert in the festival’s symphony music programme will take place on 25 May at the Concert Hall; in commemoration of one century of the ballet Le Sacre du printemps, Valery Gergiev will be conducting the music of Igor Stravinsky’s ballets Pétrouchka, The Firebird and Le Sacre du printemps.

The festival’s key premiere will be the world premiere of the outstanding contemporary Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin’s opera The Lefthander which he was commissioned to write by the theatre specially for the opening of the new stage and which he has dedicated to maestro Gergiev. There will be a concert performance of the opera on 26 June, to be followed by the premiere of the stage version on 27 and 28 July. The Stage Director is Alexei Stepanyuk and the Production Designer is Alexander Orlov.

One ballet premiere at the festival will be Alexei Ratmansky’s Concerto DSCH set to the music of Dmitry Shostakovich’s Second Piano Concerto.

For the first time at the Mariinsky-II as part of the Stars of the White Nights festival there will be a performance of Richard Wagner’s entire tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen (11, 13, 15 and 16 June). This year marks ten years since the tetralogy was first performed in the original German at the Mariinsky Theatre.

The world’s first 3D broadcast of a ballet during the Stars of the White Nights : at 21:30 on 6 June there will be a performance of the ballet Swan Lake in 3D at the historic Mariinsky Theatre, broadcast live to one thousand two hundred cinemas in fifty countries throughout the world. A normal broadcast will be relayed at the same time. The ballet will also be shown onscreen at the Mariinsky-II. The lead roles are to be performed by Yekaterina Kondaurova and Timur Askerov. Valery Gergiev will be conducting.

Traditional monograph programmes at the festival: this year, all of Dmitry Shostakovich’s string quartets will be performed by the Atrium quartet (27, 28 and 29 May), all of Ludwig van Beethoven’s violin sonatas will be performed by Leonidas Kavakos together with pianist Enrico Pace (24, 25 and 26 June) and all of Beethoven’s piano concerti will be performed by Rudolf Buchbinder (11 and 12 July).

The festival will be attended by acclaimed musicians from throughout the world. Guest star violinists at the festival include Leonidas Kavakos who will be displaying his virtuoso skills on 24, 25 and 26 June. The leader of Vienna’s The Philharmonics and the orchestra of the Wiener Staatsoper, violinist and conductor Rainer Honeck will return to St Petersburg with a dazzling programme of Austrian music which previously caused a sensation at the Concert Hall: once again, Honeck will be combining works by Mozart and the Strauss family in one concert (22 June). The violinist Pinchas Zukerman will be performing again too, this time also appearing as a conductor in a programme of concerti by Vivaldi and Mozart and works for cello by Max Bruch (2 and 4 July).
Joshua Bell will be performing Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto together with the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America under the baton of Valery Gergiev (18 July). Guest music ensembles are to include two quartets – the Atrium quartet, one of the greatest and most popular new quartets on the international music scene, with a programme of all of Dmitry Shostakovich’s quartets over three evenings (27, 28 and 29 May), and the unique Borodin Quartet in a programme of quartets by Tchaikovsky and Brahms (3 July).
The list of guest pianists is also highly promising. There will be chamber recitals by Daniil Trifonov (3 June) and Alexei Volodin (17 June). Christian Blackshaw will be performing a chamber music programme; this time he will accompany British mezzo-soprano Alice Coote who is to perform Schubert’s song cycle Winterreise.
Rudolf Buchbinder will be performing all of Beethoven’s piano concerti with the Mariinsky Orchestra, also appearing as a conductor.
Alexander Toradze will be performing the solo in Dmitry Shostakovich’s Second Piano Concerto with the London Symphony Orchestra and maestro Valery Gergiev (26 May). Regular festival guest Denis Matsuev will be performing Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto with the theatre’s orchestra under the baton of Valery Gergiev (14 June).

A member of the renowned Järvi conducting dynasty will take to the stand of the Mariinsky Orchestra: Paavo Järvi (7 July).

Two acclaimed ballet companies will be appearing at the festival: the Batsheva Dance Company from Israel, an outstanding modern dance company with original choreography which is developing its own revolutionary techniques in movement (9 and 10 June), and Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT-1), one of the most famous dance ensembles in the world and respected for its exceptional performance levels, which will be presenting two ballets by choreographers Sol León and Paul Lightfoot (Sehnsucht and Schmetterling (3 and 4 July).

Among symphony orchestras appearing at the festival will be the London Symphony Orchestra, one of the greatest symphony ensembles in the world and of which Valery Gergiev became Principal Conductor in 2007. This will be the orchestra’s second visit to the Stars of the White Nights festival. Under the maestro’s baton the orchestra will perform Hector Berlioz’ Symphonie fantastique (26 May) and Dmitry Shostakovich’s Second Piano Concerto (with Alexander Toradze as soloist).
The Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra under Vladimir Fedoseyev is making its festival debut. The programme of their concert includes Mozart’s Forty-First Symphony and Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Manfred symphony (11 June).
Also making its festival debut will be the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America under the baton of maestro Valery Gergiev (18 July).

Chamber ensembles at the festival will be represented by the Venice Baroque Orchestra, one of the most famous ensembles in the world performing baroque music, which will be appearing with a programme of works by Vivaldi, Telemann and Handel. The musicians will be performing with the orchestra’s founder and conductor Andrea Marcon and the acclaimed singer Magdalena Kožená, a mezzo-soprano who has a brilliant grasp of the style of music of the age (18 June).
A long-standing friend of the Mariinsky Theatre, Yuri Bashmet will be appearing once again at the Concert Hall with his own orchestra, the Moscow Soloists (28 June).
Moreover, the talented Viennese musicians in The Philharmonics will be making a repeat appearance at the Mariinsky-II (1 July).

The ballet playbill, in addition to festival premieres, includes the best repertoire productions and recent premieres such as Sasha Waltz’ production of Sacre (this version will be performed on the same evening as the original Le Sacre du printemps with choreography by Nijinsky, revived for the Mariinsky Theatre by ballet mistress Millicent Hodson), ballets by George Balanchine, all of Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s ballets (Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker) and the repertoire ballets The Fountain of Bakhchisarai, La Bayadère, Don Quixote, Romeo and Juliet and Le Corsaire. Such leading Mariinsky Ballet soloists as Ulyana Lopatkina, Diana Vishneva, Yekaterina Kondaurova, Daria Pavlenko, Alina Somova, Danila Korsuntsev, Vladimir Shklyarov, Alexander Sergeyev and Andrei Yermakov will be appearing in these performances.

A musical at the festival: the audience favourite My Fair Lady by Frederick Loewe returns to the Mariinsky Theatre (production by Robert Carsen, 18, 19, 20 and 21 July). Magnificent voices of outstanding opera stars at the festival: Ferruccio Furlanetto in his finest role as Don Quichotte in the eponymous opera by Massenet (29 June), Liudmyla Monastyrska in the lead role in Tosca (19 July), Olga Borodina in Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem (5 June), Anna Netrebko in a Verdi gala and in Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem (10 and 23 June), Yevgeny Nikitin in Der Fliegende Holländer (24 June) and Maria Guleghina in Bellini’s Norma (17 July) and in Verdi’s Macbeth (20 July). On 17 June there will be a Chaliapin Gala on the eve of the International Summer Universiade in Kazan.

Highlights in brief:

• Over ten weeks, the festival will see some hundred and twenty performances and concerts featuring various guest artists, opera and ballet soloists and the Mariinsky chorus and orchestra

• Festival PREMIERES: Alexander Dargomyzhsky’s OPERA Rusalka staged by Vasily Barkhatov; Alexei Ratmansky’s ballet Concerto Dsch to music by Dmitry Shostakovich, world premiere of Rodion Shchedrin’s opera The Lefthander

• Guest solo instrumentalists at the festival:

Pianists: Alexander Toradze, Alexei Volodin, Daniil Trifonov, Denis Matsuev, Christian Blackshaw And Ferhan and Ferzan Önder

Violinists: Joshua Bell, Leonidas Kavakos, Rainer Honeck and Pinchas Zukerman

Quartets: the Atrium Quartet and the Borodin Quartet

• Guest ensembles at the festival: the Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra under Vladimir Fedoseyev, the Venice Baroque Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra under Valery Gergiev, the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America and The Philharmonics • Opera stars at the festival: Olga Borodina, Ekaterina Gubanova, Maria Guleghina, Liudmyla Monastyrska, Anna Netrebko, Ekaterina Semenchuk, Albina Shagimuratova, Ildar Abdrazakov, Alexei Markov, Yevgeny Nikitin, Mikhail Petrenko And Ferruccio Furlanetto 

• Monograph programmes at the festival: all of Dmitry Shostakovich’s quartets and all of Ludwig van Beethoven’s violin sonatas and piano concerti

With the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation

General sponsor of the festival and of the premiere of Alexander Dargomyzhsky’s opera Rusalka: VTB Bank
Principal partners of the festival: Countess Yoko Nagae Ceschina, Savings Bank of the Russian Federation
Principal sponsors of the festival: TOTAL, Mercury Group, Federal Grid Company of Unified Energy System, BP, TeliaSonera, Alrosa
Sponsors of the festival: MDM Bank, Rostec State Corporation, BOMBARDIER, Sistema, Vnesheconombank, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Renova Group, Severstal
Sponsor of the grand gala concert: Evrofinance Mosnarbank