From November 18 through 22, the Primorsky Stage of the Mariinsky Theatre will tour the capital of Buryatia for the first time. Presented at the Buryat Opera and Ballet Theatre in Ulan-Ude will be opera productions, concert performance of bel canto masterpieces, and a gala show. The performances will be a part of the federal Great Tour program.
On November 18 and 19, the Primorsky Stage company will present on the Buryat Theater stage its first original opera production, The Tsar’s Bride by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov staged by Vyacheslav Starodubtsev. The production’s premiere was held in September 2018, to become a major event of the cultural program of the III Eastern Economic Forum. The production was highly acclaimed by theatrical critics. In May 2019, The Tsar’s Bride was shown in Moscow, in the Zaryadye Concert Hall under the baton of Valery Gergiev in the program of the 18th Easter Festival, and on the New Stage of the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg.
On November 20, a concert performance of the Primorsky Stage’s recent premiere, Gaetano Donizetti’s opera Lucia di Lammermoor, will be presented. Created in 1835 on a plot after Walter Scott’s novel, this opera is always on the theatrical bill. Features of Lucia’s music are an elegant melodic language and virtuoso vocal parts, and the scene of madness in Act III written for coloratura soprano in an extremely complicated manner became iconic. In the summer of 2019, Lucia di Lammermoor was on the program of the IV International Far East Mariinsky Festival in Vladivostok, and in autumn it was presented by the Primorsky Theatre’s soloists.
On November 21, the audience will see a grand gala show of opera soloists of the Primorsky Stage. They will perform opera arias, lieder, and songs by Russian and international composers.
The tour’s program will be topped on November 22 by Giacomo Puccini’s opera Tosca staged by German director Hans-Joachim Frey. This performance was among the first produced for Vladivostok. The production of Tosca arranged in a grand and solemn Empire style is always popular with both audiences and performers. Prominent opera singers have appeared in it, such as Maria Gulegina, Vladimir Galuzin, and Evgeny Nikitin. In December 2018, the performance was presented at the Nanjing Center of Performing Arts in the province of Jiangsu, China, during the Mariinsky Theatre Festival.
The primary arias in the performances will be sung by soloists of the Primorsky Stage opera company: sopranos Alyona Diyanova, Olga Zharikova, Liliya Kadnikova, Anastasia Kikot’, and Maria Suzdaltseva; mezzo sopranos Laura Bustamante and Irina Kolodyazhnaya; tenors Ilya Astafurov, Alexei Kostyuk, Roman Krukovich, Evgeny Mizin, and Mergen Sandanov; baritones Alexei Bublik and Vyacheslav Vasiliev; and basses Sergey Pleshivtsev and Evgeny Plekhanov. Participating in the tour are the Primorsky Stage chorus and Symphony Orchestra under the baton of the theatre’s chief conductor Pavel Smelkov.
