On July 19 and July 21, 2022, the long-awaited performances of Gaetano Donizetti’s comic opera Don Pasquale were premiered on the historic stage of the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg. That opera production was included in the program of the XXX Stars of the White Nights Festival. Vyacheslav Vasilyev, a soloist of the Primorsky Stage Opera, performed the part of Dr. Malatesta. Soloists and guest soloists of the Mariinsky Theatre (including Maharram Huseynov as Don Pasquale, Olga Pudova or Yekaterina Savinkova as Norina, Boris Stepanov or Klim Tikhonov as Ernesto, and Oleg Balashov as Carlotto) were Vasilyev’s companions on the stage. At the first premiere performance, the baton was held by Valery Gergiev, Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Mariinsky Theatre. The second premiere performance was conducted by Gurgen Petrosyan, First Prize winner at the Rachmaninoff International Competition for pianists, composers and conductors (Moscow, 2022).
Don Pasquale is one of the twenty most popular Italian operas and yearly performed at about 150 opera houses all over the world. The cheerful and slightly sorrowful story has returned to the stage of the Mariinsky Theatre almost 30 years after its last performance in 1993. At the then Kirov Theatre, the famous opera was premiered in 1980; it was produced by Valery Gergiev in collaboration with Yuri Alexandrov as its Stage Director and Igor Ivanov as its Set & Costume Designer. The opera has been revived now by the Stage Director Ilya Uslyantsev. The scenery has been restored by the painters Nikolai Gavrilenko and Anastasia Rogacheva. The significant contribution to the rehearsal process has been made by Maria Nikitina, Italian Language Coach at the Mariinsky Theatre.
