From April 20, 2025 to April 29, 2025, the Primorsky Stage of the Mariinsky Theatre held one of the main musical events of this spring in the Far Eastern Federal District, namely: the II Far East Easter Festival under the auspices of the XXIV Moscow Easter Festival.
This year the Primorsky Stage toured about 3,000 kilometers, appearing for the first time in the Jewish Autonomous and Amur Regions and later returning to bring new concerts to Khabarovsk and Primorsky Territories. The tour embraced Vladivostok, Spassk-Dalny, Khabarovsk, Birobidzhan, Blagoveshchensk and Komsomolsk-on-Amur to gather audiences of more than 5,000 at its venues.
The Festival started in Vladivostok on Easter Sunday, April 20, 2025. At the Primorsky Stage of the Mariinsky Theatre, Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s lyrical opera Iolanta was presented in the production staged by Anna Shishkina and designed by Pyotr Okunev who became a nominee for the Golden Mask prize for the best Set and Costume Designer’s work that day. At the same venue on April 22, 2025, the Easter Concert was given by opera soloists, singers of the Chorus of the Primorsky Stage, members of the Mariinsky Orchestra of the Primorsky Stage under the baton of the Principal Conductor Pavel Smelkov and the Combined Chorus of the Vladivostok Eparchy under the direction of its regent Elena Kokhanovskaya. The Easter Concert completed the series of largest festive events in Vladivostok and opened the tour of the Primorsky Stage of the Mariinsky Theatre.
At the tour concerts, opera soloists together with the Mariinsky Orchestra of the Primorsky Stage performed works by Russian composers Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Sergei Prokofiev and Alexander Smelkov as well as compositions and arrangements by Pavel Smelkov, Principal Conductor of the Primorsky Stage.
The first concert was given at the Spassk-Dalny Town Folk Culture Center “Primorye”. The next stop was in Khabarovsk. The tour team appeared at two venues: the Trade Union Palace of Culture and the Eastern Military District House of Officers where the musicians gave a charity concert for military personnel and their families.
Then, as part of the Far East Easter Festival, concerts were for the first time given at the Birobidzhan Regional Philharmonic Hall and the Blagoveshchensk City Public Cultural Center.
The last point on the tour map of the Festival was Komsomolsk-on-Amur. Two bright events were held there on the same day. The musicians performed Sergei Prokofiev’s symphonic tale for children Peter and the Wolf in the afternoon, and the program “Tchaikovsky – 185” was presented in the evening.
For 7 Festival days, the Primorsky Stage of the Mariinsky Theatre gave 9 performances. Moreover, Yevgeny Plekhanov, a soloist of the Opera Company of the Primorsky Stage, held master classes for vocalists at the Knauf-Kaminskaya Central Children’s Art School in Blagoveshchensk and at the College of Art in Khabarovsk, and Alexei Zhurba, a member of the Mariinsky Orchestra of the Primorsky Stage, gave a master class for Khabarovsk trombonists.
