Once again the Bolshoi has a surprise up its sleeve for those who, in the future, may develop a real appreciation of opera and ballet. We remind you that two years ago the Theatre presented the world première of Efrem Podgayts’ ballet fantasy Wash’ em Clean. Last year it wooed its young spectators with Maurice Ravel’s opera L’Enfant et les Sortilèges, Benjamin Britten’s The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra and the enchantingly informative children’s production Be in the Mood for Opera.
Sergei Banevich — a pupil of Galina Ustvolskaya and Orest Evlakhov who, in turn, studied under Dmitri Shostakovich — continues the traditions of the Petersburg composers’ school, his work probing even deeper to the school’s roots and sources.
A modern classic, who entered the history of Russian theatre and cinema at the end of the 20th-beginning of the 21st century, the author of music for many plays and movies, he, like no one else, has an intuitive feel for the living pulse of drama. His music is always vibrant and, in the best sense of the word, theatrical. Organically interwoven into text, sequence of events and visual images, it imparts added punch to each frame. But it is at children that Banevich’s music has always been aimed. He has composed marvelous operas, musicals and operettas for children (The Young Prince, Treasure Island, The Brave Tin Soldier, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Mermaid and many, many more).
The Story of Kai and Gerda (or The Snow Queen), is one of Sergei Banevich’s most famous operas. It was written in the year the Afghan War started (1979) at a time that, as the composer himself says, was totally unsuited to this appealing story of the warmth of the human heart which ran counter to the ‘official’ social moods of the time. For all this, the Kirov Theatre (today the Mariinsky) decided to stage the opera. And they were right — audiences loved it and it was to remain in the repertoire for thirty years.
Conductor Anton Grishanin is the production’s musical director. A Ural Conservatoire graduate who, for five years was artistic director and chief conductor of the Chelyabinsk Theatre of Opera and Ballet, at the present time he is conductor at the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Theatre, and guest conductor at the Bolshoi Theatre of Russia, the Novosibirsk Theatre of Opera and Ballet, the Deutsche Oper Berlin and also with the National Philharmonic Orchestra of Russia. At the Bolshoi, Anton Grishanin has conducted the ballets Don Quixote, Classical Symphony to music by Prokofiev, and Swan Lake.
The sets are by the legendary scenographer, People’s Designer of the USSR Valery Leventhal. And the opera is lit by Bolshoi Theatre Chief Lighting Designer Damir Ismagilov.
Photo-report of repetitions by Damir Yusupov.
Premier performances will take place on 2014 November 28-30, December 27, 28, 30, 31 & 2015 Janyary 2-4, 6 & 7.
Art. Lebedev Studio