© Pasquale Juzzolino

On tour
Mariinsky Orchestra
Conductor: Valery Gergiev
Peralada, San Sebastián, Turku
August 2—6, 2013

This Monday the Mariinsky Orchestra went on tour to European summer festivals. Musicians have already played at the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival in Kiel (Germany), at the Ljubljana Festival in Ljubljana (Slovenia) and at the Carinthischer Sommer Festival in Villach (Austria). They are heading to Spain today.

On Friday, August 2 the orchestra will play an all-Wagner concert at the Festival Castell de Peralada. Mariinsky Opera soloists — soprano Mlada Khudoley, tenor Avgust Amonov and bass Mikhail Petrenko as well as famous Wagnerian soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek will take part in this concert that will feature Act I from Die Walküre and excerpts from Tristan und Isolde, Lohengrin and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. The Festival Castell de Peralada was founded in 1987. The Mariinsky Orchestra under Valery Gergiev performed there only once, on August 3 & 4, 1991, playing Prokofiev’s Ivan the Terrible and Verdi’s Otello (starring Plácido Domingo in the title role).

On Saturday, August 3 and Sunday, August 4 the orchestra will play at the San Sebastián Musical Fortnight Festival. The first evening will feature the Overture to Wagner’s Lohengrin, Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme (soloist Alexander Buzlov) and Brahms’ Symphony No. 2. The next evening musicians will play Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 (soloist Ignasi Cambra) and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 13 (“Babi Yar”) performed alongside the local chorus and bass Mikhail Petrenko. The San Sebastián Musical Fortnight Festival was founded in 1939. The Mariinsky Orchestra under Valery Gergiev had previously played in San Sebastián in 2007 and 2010 (Maestro Gergiev also conducted the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra in 2004 and the London Symphony Orchestra in 2006).

On Monday, August 5 and Tuesday, August 6 the orchestra will play at the Turku Music Festival, founded in 1960, the oldest one in Finland. The first evening, which will open the Festival, will feature The Swan of Tuonela tone poem by Sibelius, Shchedrin’s Piano Concerto No. 4 (soloist Olli Mustonen) and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 (“Pathétique”). The next evening will be the opera gala dedicated to a pair of composers to mark their bicentenaries, featuring excerpts from Verdi’s La forza del destino, Macbeth, Don Carlo, Otello, Un ballo in maschera and Wagner’s Lohengrin, Der fliegende Holländer and Tannhäuser. Mariinsky Opera soloists — soprano Larisa Gogolevskaya, baritone Alexei Markov and bass-baritone Yevgeny Nikitin will take part in this gala. These concerts will mark cultural relations between twin cities of St Petersburg and Turku. The Mariinsky Orchestra under Valery Gergiev had previously played at the Turku Music Festival in 2004, 2009 and 2011.

Triple bill
Carmen Suite, Prodigal Son, Le Jeune Homme et La Mort
Mariinsky II (new stage)
Monday, August 5, 7:00PM
Tuesday, August 6, 7:00PM
Wednesday, August 7, 7:00PM

Three nights in a row — on Monday, August 5, Tuesday, August 6 and Wednesday, August 7, the new Mariinsky Theatre (Mariinsky II) will see performances of triple bill that features one-act ballets created in the 20th century — Alberto Alonso’s Carmen Suite (1967) set to music by Bizet-Shchedrin, George Balanchine’s Prodigal Son (1929) set to music by Prokofiev, and Roland Petit’s Le Jeune Homme et la Mort (1946) set to music by Bach. Very different in terms of style and emotional expression, these ballets provide dancers with a great opportunity to express themselves in deeply dramatic principal roles.

Carmen Suite tells the story of a passionate, free-spirited Carmen in contrast to the temperamental and fickle Don José. The story has been expressed using symbols, which is emphasised by the place where the stage is set — at the bullfight ring. Prodigal Son is based on a famous Biblical parable expressed in a rather dramatical way. Although a few details have been omitted and a few others added to the original story, its main idea has been kept unchanged. Le Jeune Homme et la Mort, one of the earliest and most famous works by Roland Petit, goes to a theme of relationships between an artist and death that appears in the image of a girl and drives him committing suicide.

These three nights the stage of the Mariinsky II will see a unique cast of star soloists that seldom appear together in one performance — Yekaterina Kondaurova, Natalia Osipova, Viktoria Tereshkina, Danila Korsuntsev, Ivan Vasiliev, Vladimir Shklyarov et. al.

© Valentin Baranovsky

© John Ross

© Valentin Baranovsky

Olga Esina
Starring in Le Corsaire
Mariinsky II (new stage)
Thursday, August 8, 7:00PM

The performance of Le Corsaire choreographed by Pyotr Gusev (based on the composition and choreography by Marius Petipa) that will take place at the new Mariinsky Theatre (Mariinsky II) on Thursday, August 8 will be the final ballet performance of the 230th season. The role of Medora will be danced by Olga Esina, First Soloist with the Wiener Staatsballett since 2006. She graduated from the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet in 2004 and was a soloist with the Mariinsky Ballet from 2004 to 2006. This season at the Mariinsky Theatre she danced the role of Odette-Odile in Swan Lake at the 13th International Mariinsky Ballet Festival and took part in the International Ballet Stars Gala as well as the Grand Gala marking the opening of the Mariinsky II. Starting this month, Olga Esina appears at the Mariinsky in the new capacity of Guest Principal with the Mariinsky Ballet.