On February 27 and 28, 2025, the audience of the Primorsky Stage of the Mariinsky Theatre will enjoy a new director’s version of Igor Stravinsky’s Mavra.
The opera will be presented by two casts of singers: those who have participated in the first productions of the opera, and new soloists. On February 27, 2025, the vivid images will be embodied by Anastasia Kikot, Laura Bustamante, Irina Kolodyazhnaya and Vsevolod Marilov; on February 28, 2025, Samira Galimova, Natalia Yakimova, Elena Glushenko, and Ilya Astafurov will take the stage.
When creating Mavra in 1921, the composer “sought to convey the ‘zephyr’ of Pushkin’s verses”. He dedicated the opera to Mikhail Glinka and Pyotr Tchaikovsky, because he wanted to convey his musical and spiritual kinship with the composers. This ironic opera with a vaudevillian ending is written in a grotesque musical language, combining features of an urban romance, gypsy motifs, a military march and a quadrille. “This is a new twist in the development of musical ideals”, wrote Igor Stravinsky about the score of his Mavra.
Here is what Irina Soboleva, Artistic Director of the Opera Company of the Primorsky Stage of the Mariinsky Theatre, told: “Igor Stravinsky’s music is distinguished by its unpredictability. By the way, the same is true for the personality of this great composer-inventor, the most prominent representative of the global musical culture of the 20th century. Despite his immigration and creative experiments, his music had always remained Russian. Mavra demonstrates it perfectly. Speaking about the composer, I would like to recall one of his quotes. As if in a mirror, it reflects the author himself, with that elongated face of his, his harsh features, and his irony: ‘The only possible commentary on a musical composition is another musical composition!’ I hope that the airy and witty Mavra will once again become a highlight of the Chamber Hall’s playbill”.
Vyacheslav Starodubtsev, Stage Director, has followed the composer’s path and resorted to a synthesis of drama and opera theatrical tools with the poetic source, using as basis Alexander Pushkin’s poem The Little House in Kolomna and his lyceum verses. He defines the genre of his performance as “an operatic joke”. In the new version of the performance, another character will be added to the cast, and some of the mise-en-scènes will be changed. Nevertheless, the design of the performance will remain familiar to the viewer, because the Set Designer Pyotr Okunev has filled the scenery with subtle visual irony and created sets and costumes that cannot be attributed to any epoch. Thus, the action takes place against the backdrop of a blue sky and white clouds where the main characters “hover”; white dresses float above the stage as a symbol of maiden dreams of pure love.
Before the end of the season, the performance will be presented on March 19 and 20, April 17, May 16 and 17, 2025.
