On December 16, 2022, marking 90 years since the birth of the living Russian classic, prominent composer Rodion Shchedrin, his opera The Enchanted Wanderer staged by Alexei Stepanyuk will be performed on the Primorsky Stage for the first time. This stage version of the opera has won the Golden Mask award.
The composer has defined the genre of The Enchanted Wanderer as a “concert opera”, making it similar to an oratorio. Three soloists play roles, at the same time telling the story of their own lives. The music is very multifaceted: it features the “plain Russian chant”, or “Znamenny Chant”, in the prologue and epilogue; the bell chimes in the culminations; the shepherd’s melodies familiar to the composer since childhood; the stylization of village laments that Shchedrin could have heard in folklore expeditions; the gypsy romance. The composer’s music also offers countless shades of silence; it can be lulling, terrifying, thoughtful. Shchedrin belongs to those few composers who are able to construct music not only from notes, but also from pauses.
The music by Rodion Shchedrin, no matter what subjects he chooses, no matter what he writes about, will never lose its relevance, because the main principle of the composer operates over and over again: “The music composed today should, as before, touch the listener, capture him, captivate, sink into his soul and heart”.
The main parts in The Enchanted Wanderer will be performed by soloists of the St Petersburg Mariinsky Theatre Oleg Sychov and Yekaterina Sergeyeva, as well as soloist with the Mariinsky Academy of Young Opera Singers Artem Melikhov. The conductor’s stand will be taken by Pavel Smelkov, Principal Conductor of the Primorsky Stage.
