This year the largest music project in the region – the II Far East Easter Festival – is held from April 20, 2025 to April 29, 2025. The Festival will embrace such towns and cities as Spassk-Dalny, Khabarovsk, Birobidzhan, Blagoveshchensk and Komsomolsk-on-Amur. As part of the forum, a total of 9 performances are expected to take place in Primorsky and Khabarovsk Territories, the Jewish Autonomous Region and Amur Region.
On April 20, 2025, the Festival started at the Primorsky Stage of the Mariinsky Theatre in Vladivostok. It opened with Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s most lucid and lyrical opera Iolanta. This philosophical fairy tale of the revival of love and inner light was presented in the production staged by Anna Shishkina and designed by Pyotr Okunev, a nominee for the Golden Mask prize for the best Set and Costume Designer’s work.
On April 22, 2025, the large-scale Easter Concert will be given in the Great Hall of the Primorsky Stage. Opera soloists, singers of the Chorus of the Primorsky Stage and members of the Mariinsky Orchestra of the Primorsky Stage under the baton of the Principal Conductor Pavel Smelkov will perform the cantata-mystery The Lilacs by the modern St. Petersburg composer Alexander Smelkov to poetry by Marina Tsvetaeva and “K.R.” (pen name of the Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich of Russia). The other part of the programme will be performed by the Combined Chorus of the Vladivostok Eparchy. The audience will be able to enjoy chants composed by such sacred concert masters as Pavel Chesnokov, Alexander Nikolski and Alexander Tretyakov, as well as music by such famous 20th century Russian composers as Nikolai Tcherepnin, Georgy Sviridov, Sergei Prokofiev and others.
After the performances in Primorsky Territory, the Theatre team will go on its eventful tour which promises to be more expanded this year. The Festival will last 7 days and embrace 4 regions. The Primorsky Stage of the Mariinsky Theatre will for the first time tour in the Jewish Autonomous and Amur Regions and later return to bring new concerts to Khabarovsk Territory where performances will be given in Khabarovsk and Komsomolsk-on-Amur. Moreover, one of the concerts in Khabarovsk will be a charity one for participants in the special military operation and members of their families.
The programme of touring concerts will be presented by soloists of the Opera Company and the Mariinsky Orchestra of the Primorsky Stage. It includes works by Russian composers such as Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Sergei Prokofiev and Alexander Smelkov as well as compositions and arrangements by Pavel Smelkov, Principal Conductor of the Primorsky Stage.
It should be noted that in 2024 the Primorsky Stage affiliated to the large-scale Moscow Easter Festival organized by Valery Gergiev, and presented the I Far East Easter Festival. Then the four cities (Vladivostok, Khabarovsk, Komsomolsk-on-Amur and Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk) could enjoy Russian and foreign music masterpieces. The Festival became the most outstanding event in the cultural life of the region and gave access to the world classical music art for more than 5000 people.
