St Petersburg, Mariinsky II

Renard. Mavra. The Fairy's Kiss

works by Igor Stravinsky

The performance will have synchronised Russian supertitles


I. RENARD
ballet
libretto by the composer after Russian folk tales from the collection of Alexander Afanasiev
Music by Igor Stravinsky
Musical Director: Valery Gergiev
Director and Choreographer: Maxim Petrov
Set Designer: Alyona Pikalova
Costume Designer: Uldus Bakhtiozina
Lighting Designer: Konstantin Binkin
Video Designer: Sergey Rylko
Animated characters designed by Yulia Gilchenok
Musical Preparation: Larisa Gergieva

Performers:
Rustam Azizov
Maxim Izmestiev
Artem Kellerman
Kirill Leontiev
Ilya Mogilnikov
Pavel Ostapenko
Dmitry Pykhachov
Vasily Shcherbakov
Daniil Sazonov
Yaroslav Ryzhov
Erwin Zagidullin

Tenor I – Andrei Ilyushnikov
Tenor II – Dmitry Voropaev
Bass I – Andrei Serov
Bass II – Ilya Bannik


II. LES CINQ DOIGTS
eight very easy pieces using five notes for piano
musical intermission
Performed by Lyudmila Sveshnikova


III. MAVRA
opera
libretto by Boris Kochno after the poem The Little House in Kolomna by Alexander Pushkin
accompanied by supertitles in Russian and in English
Musical Director: Valery Gergiev
Director and Choreographer: Maxim Petrov
Set Designer: Alyona Pikalova
Costume Designer: Uldus Bakhtiozina
Lighting Designer: Konstantin Binkin
Musical Preparation: Natalia Mordashova

The Hussar: Stanislav Leontiev
The Mother: Anna Kiknadze
Parasha: Natalya Pavlova
The Neighbour: Evelina Agabalaeva


IV. THE FAIRY'S KISS
ballet
libretto by the composer after fairy-tales by Hans Christian
Musical Director: Valery Gergiev
Choreographer: Maxim Petrov
Set Designer: Alyona Pikalova
Costume Designer: Uldus Bakhtiozina
Lighting Designer: Konstantin Binkin
Musical Preparation: Lyudmila Sveshnikova

The Youth – Alexander Sergeev
First Fairy – Maria Bulanova
Second Fairy – Tatiana Tkachenko
Third Fairy – Renata Shakirova
Fourth Fairy – Soslan Kulaev
The Bride – Nadezhda Batoeva
Youths – Nail Yenikeyev, Eldar Yangirov


The Mariinsky Orchestra
Conductor: Arseny Shuplyakov


The three works by Igor Stravinsky in this programme represent three genres.
Renard is an “histoire burlesque chantée et joée”. Even by fairytale standards, the plot is banal (a vixen abducts a cockerel and other animals save him) and, in general, has little meaning: the voices of the four singers are not determined by the characters. Line by line and word by word, when compiling the libretto from Russian folk tales Stravinsky was interested, first and foremost, in the phonetics and the rhythm of the text. Today, this text reminds us most of Daniil Kharms and Alexander Vvedensky, while the tempo and energy of the musical presentation invokes rap.
Mavra is an opera based on Pushkin’s the Little House in Kolomna, a bridge between Russia and Europe: the score is indeed dedicated to the memory of Alexander Pushkin, Mikhail Glinka and Pyotr Tchaikovsky, the three leading pro-western men in 19th century Russian art. Voices from a past that is beautiful – with urban romances, gypsy songs and Italian opera in a Russian format – sound like listening to an old record. (Stravinsky had actually found the sliding musical intonations so typical of Mavra in gramophone recordings, still very imperfect in the 1920s.) One hears voices of St Petersburg’s Kolomna district where Stravinsky grew up: the church bells of the St Nicholas Naval Cathedral and the marches of the army brass bands that were based in New Holland.
Le Baiser de la fée is a ballet. Stravinsky took pieces by Tchaikovsky to work on and dedicated the score to him. One may discern a dozen direct citations from piano miniatures and romances, though more frequently the listener will be perturbed vaguely familiar intonations: Le Baiser de la fée is reminiscent of a “toothy” neural work, and all of Tchaikovsky’s music flows through it. As the basis of the plot, Andersen’s “Ice-Maiden” is listed in purely nominal terms – the ballet’s true plot in actual fact comprises the adventures of a great Russian classic in the future. the journey travelled by the audience is one from “A lullaby into a storm”, instigated in the very first bars, to “A lullaby in the land of eternity” (the title of the epilogue), from a comprehensible and highly structured life to the emptiness of the vast stage of the Mariinsky-II. Bogdan Korolyok


Premiere of Renard staged by Bronislava Nijinska: 18 May 1922, The Ballets Russes of Sergei Diaghilev, Paris
Premiere of Mavra: 3 June 1922, The Ballets Russes of Sergei Diaghilev, Paris
Premiere of The Fairy's Kiss (under the title Le Baiser de la fée) staged by Bronislava Nijinska: 27 November 1928, The Ida Rubinstein Ballet Company, Paris

Premiere of the evening at the Mariinsky Theatre: 11 July 2021

Alyona Pikalova (Set Designer) and Sergey Rylko (Video Designer) are laureates of the Russia’s national Golden Mask theatre award (2022) for the best work of an artist in a musical theatre.

Age category 12+

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