The 145th season of Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre is opened with three pieces by Pyotr Tchaikovsky: on the 27 and 28 of August The Nutcracker will add some freshness to this summer heat wave; on the 3 and 4 of September one will be able to find shelter from the burning sun in the shadows of Swan Lake and on the 7 of September a concert version of Cherevichki will be performed.
The first big premiere of the 145ер season is planned on December and it will be the first ever performance of Alexei Syumak’s opera Cantos.
PREMIERES
The first premiere will be the piece called Cantos by Alexei Syumak, commissioned by him for the theatre. Songs (this is how «cantos» is translated from Greek) are inspired by the works of American writer Ezra Pound (1885−1972) who was one of the founders of the English-language postmodernist literature. The work will be staged by Semyon Aleksandrovsky — one of the establishers and masterminds of «Pop-up theatre» in St. Petersburg, who is known for working in the direction of the «documentary theatre». The performance will involve 26 chorus singers and 3−4 musicians.
In November, prior to this event and around school holidays, the theatre will present a new children’s show. Tatiana Poluektova is stepping out as a director of the revival of the Adventures in the Opera Land by Minkov. It means a total renovation of the set and costumes while the story will remain intact.
The first ballet premiere of the season will introduce interpretation of classics. In December the audience will see a new version of Sergei Prokofiev’s Cinderella staged by Alexei Miroshnichenko, the principal ballet master of the theatre. In the new performance the choreographer will continue reflecting on culture and aesthetics of the Soviet past. His last year premieres were about the same topic — the opera-bouffe Orango and the ballet Hypothetically Murdered to the music by Shostakovich.
Alexei Miroshnichenko, the principal ballet master of Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre:
— The Soviet project has been continuously generating interest. Reflection over this collective experience is obviously not over and there is no chance to move on unless this process is actually completed. Our recents ballet to the newly-discovered music by Shostakovich has been trying to reconcile us to the 30th; now we’ll be trying to reconcile to the 50th of the XXth century. The idea of putting the story into this historical period and into the unusual situation belongs to the artistic director of Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre Teodor Currentzis. The visual correspondence to the epoch to be revealed by designers Tatiana Noginova and Alyona Pikalova. It will be totally new choreography, however, with regard of the period chosen.
In February Perm audience will see the second opera premiere in the Private Philharmonia «Triumph»: Svadba/Wedding by Ana Sokolovich, Serbian composer living in Canada since the 1990s (winner of the numerous prestigious Canadian awards including «The composer of the year» (2007) and the «Pri-Opus» — musical analogue of Oscar in Quebec) will be performed for the first time in Russia.
It is an hour-long opera, with no supporting music, to be performed by six female singers. The story depicts a Serbian tradition of the wedding preparation of a bride. The director of the opera is Anton Adasinsky — an actor, director, choreographer and musician, a founder and leader of the theatre «DEREVO».
CONCERTS
The first month of the season is already going to offer plenty of events. On the 24th and 25th of September the ballet admirers will see a spectacular event: gala concerts on the 90th anniversary of Perm Ballet. The programme of the concert will be a perfect example of majestical style of the current generation of ballet dancers, their true dedication to dancing canons and working knowledge of the repertoire. Extracts from the classical heritage — Giselle and Swan Lake will be performed along with with the numbers from Balanchine’s and Jerome Robbins’s ballets, plus works of modern choreographers staged specially for Perm dancers.
On the 7th of September the cycle of concert performances of the world opera masterpieces will continue with the opera Cherevichki by Tchaikovsky, conducted by the principle conductor Valery Platonov. And in November Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos will be interpreted by Artyom Abashev.
The series of enigma-concerts, when the programme performed by the guest soloist, musicAeterna orchestra and Teodor Currentzis is announced right at the moment it starts, will continue this season. The concert with the violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja (Switzerland) is scheduled for March, whose creative cooperation with Teodor Currentzis began in 2014.
Concerts will allow the audience to enjoy the rich programme: from Vivaldi to Bach, Schubert and Mendelson. Highly acclaimed star of the classical music Dmitry Sinkivsky, countertenor, conductor and violin player, and Raphael Pichon, who is an excellent expert of German and Austrian music classics, will perform on Perm stage. Martin Zandhoff, a historical performance expert and former leader of the orchestra Concerto Koln, and the trumpet player Joau Moreira will mark their presence together with the orchestra musicAeterna.
THE DIAGHILEV FESTIVAL
In mid-May the XI Diaghilev Festival will be opened with the premiere of Puccini’s La Boheme directed by Philipp Himmelmann who is no stranger to Perm audiences: he staged Le nozze di Figaro in 2012. The final event of the festival will traditionally be the concert of the festival orchestra performing the first symphony by Mahler under Teodor Currentzis conduction.
The end of the season will give a dancing premiere: the evening of the contemporary choreography — three one-act ballets based on works by Stravinsky. Vladimir Varnava will take Petrushka, Vyacheslav Samodurov will work on The Fairy’s Kids and Alexei Miroshnichenko will stage The Firebird.
TOURING
There will be several touring trips of the company across Russia and Europe. In September the musicAeterna orchestra under Teodor Currentzis conduction will perform on the most prestigious venues of Europe: in Switzerland, Germany and Austria. The concert version of The Indian Queen by Henry Purcell and the programme consisting of works of Jean Philippe Rameau The Sound of Light (together with the release of the same-name CD) will be performed. The recording, made by the orchestra musicAeterna got into the list of «The best classical music recordings of 2015» according to The New York Times.
In January the musicAeterna orchestra will have a performance in London within the charity concert A Gift of Life. The artists will perform an extract of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet.
March and April are the festival months for the musicians. They will be welcomed by Klarafestival in Brussels first, then by the Easter Festival in Luzern. Beside, spring months will take the musicAeterna orchestra on tour to Vienna, Dortmund, Berlin, Munich, Reggio nell’Emilia and Ferrara.
The ballet company will go on tour to Canada, Montreal, in February. Perm artists will present Swan Lake in the version of Natalia Makarova.