Mariinsky Theatre
e-newsletter
31 December 2010, Friday
Hello, please accept our warmest congratulations on the upcoming New Year. We should like to thank you for your continuing interest in the activities of our theater. We wish your Year 2011 to be full of new, bright and exciting events. We’ll continue with doing our best to make you happy by briniging positive emotions to you. Thanks for being with us. Have a happy New Year!

Main events of the first half of January 2011:

• On tour to Eilat
• Yakobson at the Mariinsky
• For your heart and soul

The first touring destination in 2011 for our theater will be the Israeli city of Eilat, where the Red Sea Festival of classical music is being held every winter. The festival was founded in 2000 on the initiative of Valery Gergiev as a music project and as a peace initiative when the Middle East conflict was at its height. Opera soloists, Chorus and Symphony Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre will perform a series of five concerts at the tenth Red Sea Festival. Performances by the Mariinsky Theatre artists are an integral part of this festival of classical music in Eilat.

On the two January Sundays of 9 and 16 January at the Mariinsky Theatre we are presenting ballets choreographed by Leonid Yakobson: Shurale and Spartacus. Since the middle of last century, for decades, both performances were among the most popular and beloved ones in the ballet repertory of our theater. Over the last seasons, these performances have been carefully restored, and a number of young ballet artists of the Mariinsky Theatre took a great interest to learn the new for them style and roles of the main characters, enriched with a great drama, theatricality generous and sincerely expressive with respect to what is being called simple human feelings. Choreography by Leonid Yakobson features a combination of dance, drama and pantomime. It has a careful attitude to the era of storytelling and original details of plots. Revival of these ballets represents one of the most important periods in the development of the Mariinsky Ballet in the 20th century and their popularity these days proves that they have stood the test of time and now they are once again in the repertoire of the Mariinsky Theatre.

The program of the first organ evening of 2011 at the Mariinsky Concert Hall will be shaped around the Spanish Christmas music. Organ culture of Spain has more than six centuries. It is distinguished from organ culture of other European countries by originality, a set of musical genres, particular timbre and register instruments, as well as various techniques. Showy, shrill-sounding reed registers (so-called “Spanish Trombones”), protruding from the facade of the instrument horizontally, are the most prominent feature of the Spanish organ, and the music is rich in its contrasts and “special effects”: “distancing” and “coming closer” of the sound imitating birdsong or drumbeats. In the concert on 9 January distinctive patterns of Spanish organ music will be performed by Daniel Oyarzabal, the Principal Organist at the German Church in Madrid and Organist with the Orquesta Nacional de España.

One of the most difficult, emotionally deep works for choir, Chimes by a prominent Russian composer Valery Gavrilin will be performed on 12 January at the Mariinsky Concert Hall. Vocal and instrumental music (with the outwardly apparent paucity of expressive means of the latter) came together in this monumental composition. Choral “orchestration” made by Gavrilin is full of bright colours and witty details. It is absolutely amazing how the composer makes use of the wealth of the human voice and makes the Chimes truly symphonic work. Genuine emotional message embedded by the composer in this work, tells the story of the human soul and one’s spiritual growth.

The most famous story of the sublime and mournful love of all operatic repertoire ever is undoubtely Tristan and Isolde by Richard Wagner. It will be performed on 15 January at the Mariinsky Concert Hall. Operas are often performed in concert. In addition to their fully staged productions on stage of the Mariinsky Theatre, concert performances provide our theatre-goers with the opportunity to draw attention to the most brilliant pieces of musical compositions, focusing on the vocal skills of opera singers in the extremely demanding roles of Wagnerian heroes, as well as the bright, powerful, truly symphonic orchestra playing. Along with musicians, listeners “live” through the operatic score, page-by-page, recognising the famous motifs of love, death, grief, longing, loss, etc. presented in the form of large-scale musical canvases within the genuine masterpiece composed by one of the greatest German composers.