I Far East Easter Festival will be held from May 9 to 14, 2024 and will become part of the large-scale Moscow Easter Festival, led by Valery Gergiev. The Festival program will include performances in Primorsky, Khabarovsk and Sakhalin Regions.
The Far East Easter Festival will start on May 9, 2024 in the Great Hall of the Primorsky Stage of the Mariinsky Theatre in Vladivostok. A large-scale concert to commemorate the feast of Holy Easter and the Victory Day in the Great Patriotic War will be featuring the Mariinsky Orchestra of the Primorsky Stage, the Chorus and soloists of the Opera Company of the Primorsky Stage of the Mariinsky Theatre, the Combined Chorus of the Vladivostok Eparchy and the Russian Pacific Fleet Orchestra.
The performances will continue in Khabarovsk, where the Company of the Primorsky Stage of the Mariinsky Theatre will perform twice.
On May 10, 2024, the recent premiere of the Primorsky Stage of the Mariinsky Theatre, Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta, will be performed on the stage of the Khabarovsk Regional Musical Theatre.
“Iolanta is among the ten most famous Russian operas in the world; it is an absolutely amazing work! The pinnacle of the composer’s skill, the opera was written by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky a year before his death and became the brilliant result of all his operatic creativity. An interesting (and perhaps not generally known) fact is that the composer began to create Iolanta from the end, that is, from the last scene, which is the brightest and most solemn, and which praises light, wisdom, love, faith and devotion. So strongly was Tchaikovsky impressed by the play Kong Renés Datter (King René's Daughter) by the Danish poet Henrik Hertz, staged at the Moscow Maly Theatre. Indeed, until the moment when the composer became acquainted with the play, his operas had been mainly dramatic in their content, without a breakthrough to the light in the final chords. Iolanta was quite different. It is all permeated with joy and hope, and therefore this music is so graceful, such a great pleasure to listen to”, comments Irina Soboleva, Artistic Director of the Opera Company of the Primorsky Stage of the Mariinsky Theatre.
The opera will be performed in full stage design and costumes. The performance will feature soloists of the Opera Company, the Chorus and the Mariinsky Orchestra of the Primorsky Stage. The Principal Conductor Pavel Smelkov will take the baton.
Then the Company will go to Komsomolsk-on-Amur, to present two concert programs on the stage of the Drama Theatre on May 11, 2024. The afternoon performance will feature Le quattro stagioni, the cycle of violin concerti by Antonio Vivaldi and Stabat Mater cantata by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi. In the evening, the Mariinsky Orchestra of the Primorsky Stage and opera soloists will give a large Gala Concert.
On May 12, 2024, a large Gala Concert featuring the Mariinsky Orchestra of the Primorsky Stage and opera soloists is going to take place on the stage of the Khabarovsk House of Officers of the Eastern Military District. The program includes works by Mozart, Donizetti, Rossini, Schubert, Gounod, Verdi, Alyabyev, Glinka, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Rachmaninoff, Sviridov, Smelkov, Hermann, and Neapolitan songs.
The Chorus of the Primorsky Stage of the Mariinsky Theatre will perform All-Night Vigil by Sergei Rachmaninoff on May 12, 2024 at 19:00 in the Transfiguration Cathedral in Vladivostok. The event will be open to the general public.
The Far East Easter Festival will end on May 14, 2024 in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. Daytime and evening concerts will take place on the stage of the Chekhov International Theatre Centre. The program will include Le quattro stagioni cycle by Vivaldi, Stabat Mater cantata by Pergolesi, as well as overtures, arias and romances created by outstanding Russian and foreign composers.
