On April 30 and May 20, the Primorsky Stage of the Mariinsky Theatre will give a series of performances of Carmen Suite, dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the ballet and the 85th anniversary of one of the greatest contemporary composers Rodion Shchedrin.
Carmen Suite was written by Shchedrin on the basis of Bizet’s score specially for the ballet created for Maya Plisetskaya by choreographer Alberto Alonso. At the Primorsky Stage Carmen Suite premiered with a tremendous success as part of the First Mariinsky Far East Festival on 3 August, 2016. And on 2 November, the Primorsky Stage audience saw the performance starring Diana Vishneva, dedicated to the memory of Maya Plisetskaya. In their turn, the Primorsky Stage ballet soloists have become successors to great traditions and Vladivostok has acquired its own “personal” Carmen – the Honoured Artist of Bashkortostan and multiple award-winner Irina Sapozhnikova.
A long-standing creative association and friendship between the Mariinsky Theatre and the talented couple – Rodion Shchedrin – Maya Plisetskaya constituted an epoch in the history of the Mariinsky Theatre. Today, the Mariinsky can be rightfully called “the Shchedrin’s Theatre”: its extensive repertoire features most of Rodion Konstantinovich works, including ballets Carmen Suite, the Little Humpbacked Horse, Anna Karenina and operas Not Love Alone, Dead Souls, The Enchanting Wanderer, as well as those, written specially for the Mariinsky – Levsha or The Left-Hander (commissioned for the opening of the Mariinsky’s New Stage in 2013), A Christmas Tale (2015). The Russian choral opera Boyarynya Morozova is presented in the format of concert performance. Among other compositions are six concertos and cycles for piano; five concertos for orchestra and three symphonies; instrumental concertos. Also, Rodion Shchedrin’s works conducted by Valery Gergiev are regularly released on the Mariinsky Label and receive great critical acclaim and awards from reputable national and international newspapers and magazines.
