The Primorsky Stage of the Mariinsky Theatre closed its 5th season (which ran for 45 weeks) with a performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte on 27 May. The Chamber Hall of the Primorsky Stage will host the performances of Olga Piccolo’s productions from the cycle Music Told in Tales of Sand (which is part of the Valery Gergiev for Children project) on 2 June and 3 June. The performances will be dedicated to the Children’s Day.
Moreover, the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg will welcome the first ever tour of the Primorsky Stage opera company on 2 June. To be performed is Igor Stravinsky’s Mavra staged by Vyacheslav Starodubtsev. The Primorsky Stage’s ballet will bring its productions to St Petersburg from 31 July to 12 August. The historic Mariinsky Theatre will see the performances of Le Corsaire, Giselle, and The Sleeping Beauty, which will mark 200 years since the birth of Marius Petipa. The Primorsky Stage, in its turn, will welcome the Buryat Opera and Ballet Theatre on tour from 24 June to 28 June. The playbill includes Un ballo in maschera, Don Quixote, The Swan Lake, as well as a series of gala concerts.
The Primorsky Stage has opened its 2017/2018 season with the II International Mariinsky Far East Festival. Over 28 days, more than 500 artists and musicians from 12 countries have given 40 performances and concerts for the Far East of Russia theatre public. The programme included the premieres of Rodion Shchedrin’s The Little Humpbacked Horse and Richard Wagner’s Der Fliegende Holländer. The Festival’s guest stars included the London Royal Ballet prima ballerina Natalia Osipova, principal dancer of the Mariinsky Theatre and the Bayerisches Staatsballett Vladimir Shklyarov; opera stars Tatiana Serjan, Albina Shagimuratova, Vladislav Sulimsky, Yevgeny Nikitin; renowned instrumentalists, such as Clara-Jumi Kang, Daniel Lozakovitj, Nikolaj Znaider (violin); Sergei Babayan, Nobuyuki Tsujii (piano) and many others. The International Mariinsky Far East Festival, which is set to take place in July and August of 2018, will be no less grand.
The Primorsky Stage of the Mariinsky Theatre’s achievements this season have been duly noticed and it has received a BraVo award. The expert jury voted for the Primorsky Stage as the Best Concert/Theatre Venue.
In the 2017/2018 season, the ensemble of the Primorsky Stage of the Mariinsky Theatre has presented the premieres of Richard Wagner’s Der Fliegende Holländer (staged by Ian Judge), Giuseppe Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra (staged by Andrea De Rosa), Igor Stravinsky’s Mavra (staged by Vyacheslav Starodubtsev); concert performances of Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tsar’s Bride; chamber productions of Songs by the Sea and From Holberg’s Time, set to the music of Edvard Grieg. Over the season, the Primorsky Stage ballet has often performed on tour.
The ballet company travelled abroad for the first time and performed in Harbin (China) and Seoul (South Korea). It also performed three times at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, where it presented its productions of Giselle, Le Corsaire, The Sleeping Beauty, The Firebird, Carmen Suite, Apollo, and Prodigal Son.
The soloists of the Primorsky Stage, such as Guzel Sharipova, Alena Diyanova, Tatiana Makarchuk, and Vyacheslav Vasilyev have successfully performed in the Mariinsky Theatre’s opera productions. Moreover, the artists of the Primorsky Stage and the soloists of the Mariinsky Theatre took part in concert performances of Giuseppe Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra in Khabarovsk and Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk.
In the 2017/2018 season, the Primorsky Stage orchestra, chorus and soloists presented their concert programmes in Ussuriysk. The programmes featured a concert of symphonic and vocal music dedicated to 200 years since the birth of Alexei Tolstoy, the festive New Year's Eve Kaleidoscope, as well as a concert performance of Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta. Multiple charity concerts have been performed at the Far Eastern Federal University with the participation of the Primorsky Stage Orchestra and the Primorsky Stage soloists.
The new project Valery Gergiev for Children has been launched for preschool and school children. Olga Piccolo’s productions from the cycle Music Told in Tales of Sand were performed at the Primorsky Stage over the 2017/2018 season. In the spring of 2018, the Primorsky Stage invited children and their parents to spend their Holidays at the Mariinsky. The project’s playbill included the est repertory productions for the entire family. In March of 2018, guests from the All-Russian Children's Center Ocean attended a lecture on musical theatre with the participation of the Primorsky Stage orchestra soloists. Educational projects were further expanded due to the addition of such projects as Theatre Lesson, Students’ Wednesdays, and Weekend Excursions. On 27 March, the Primorsky Stage joined the World Theatre Day celebrations. The opera, ballet and orchestra artists gave the theatre-goers backstage tours.
The Primorsky Stage was the first venue in the Far East of Russia to present opera productions with audio descriptions for the visually impaired. Over the season, experienced musicians held open-to-all master classes on a broad range of subjects, including opera singing, choral conducting, violin, flute, French horn, and oboe at the Primorsky Stage.
In the 2017/2018 season, the Primorsky Stage of the Mariinsky Theatre welcomed the productions of famed Russian and foreign ensembles, such as the Boris Eifman Ballet Theatre, the Liaoning Ballet of China, China National Peking Opera Company, and the Vakhtangov Theatre.
The fifth season of the Primorsky Stage saw the performances of the Mariinsky Orchestra under the baton of Valery Gergiev; the Mariinsky Opera soloists, including Tatiana Pavlovskaya, Olga Trifonova, Yekaterina Shimanovich, Leonid Zakhozhaev, Alexander Mikhailov, Sergei Skorokhodov, Vadim Kravets, Vladislav Sulimsky, Stanislav Trofimov, and Vladimir Feliauer; principal dancer of the Mariinsky Theatre Kimin Kim, as well as soloists Yekaterina Osmolkina and Maria Shirinkina; opera stars Maria Guleghina, Julia Novikova, Dmytro Popov; famed instrumentalists, such as Yuri Bashmet (viola), Denis Matsuev, Peter Laul, Ilya Rashkovsky, Zarina Shimanskaya (piano), Pavel Milyukov, Ziyu He (violin); prima ballerina of the Boston Ballet Misa Kuranaga, prima ballerina of the Sofia Opera and Ballet Marta Petkova, principal dancer of the National Ballet of Japan Yudai Fukuoka; the soloists of the Japanese Tani Momoko Ballet Company Tomoya Imai, Nagahashi Ayumi, and Sato Marika; conductors Mischa Damev (Switzerland), Darrell Ang (Singapore), Shizuo Z Kuwahara (Japan), Mikica Jevtić (Serbia), Vladislav Karklin, Anton Shaburov; the Moscow Soloists chamber ensemble and the Krasnoyarsk Municipal Choral Ensemble of Soloists Tebe Poem.
