From March 7th to 13th, Mariinsky Theatre Opera Soloists, Chorus and Orchestra under Valery Gergiev will be touring in European cities. During this week-long tour we will play seven concerts in five cities, performing works by Russian composers: Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Dmitri Shostakovich as well as Fifth Symphony by Gustav Mahler (concerts in Lyon and Toulouse). The tour will kick off with concerts at the famous Théâtre des Champs-Elysees in Paris where we will present a pair of all-Stravinsky programs: ballet Pétrouchka, Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra (piano part: Boris Berezovsky), opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex (starring Gérard Depardieu as the Narrator), Symphony of Psalms for chorus and orchestra, written on Latin texts of three psalms, and Les Noces, a “dance cantata” for soloists, chorus, four pianos and percussion. Théâtre des Champs-Elysees, which will be marking the centenary of its opening next year, is closely linked with Ballets Russes by Sergei Diaghilev. It was this theater where a scandalous premiere of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring took place (choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky, sets and costumes designs by Nicholas Roerich), thus becoming the celebrated location of one of the most famous of all classical music riots.

Stravinsky on the Mariinsky Label

In May 2010, we released a disc on the Mariinsky Label with a recording of Stravinsky’s Les Noces and Oedipus Rex with the famous French actor Gérard Depardieu narrating the latter. The disc was a huge success: last year, it was the 2011 ICMA Award Winner as the Best Choral Work, and a prestigious French media Opera Magazine awarded it five stars.

Mariinsky Theatre in Geneva in April

Following this tour’s concert by the Mariinsky Opera Soloists, Chorus and Orchestra conducted by Valery Gergiev at the Grand Théâtre de Genève, the Mariinsky Ballet will perform there again on 17, 18 & 19 April: we will present Rodion Shchedrin’s ballet Anna Karenina, choreographed by Alexei Ratmansky. The performance on April 17th will be conducted by Valery Gergiev.

On March 19th, at the Mariinsky Concert Hall, Mariinsky Theatre Opera Soloists, Chorus and Orchestra conducted by Valery Gergiev will perform one of the most mysterious and greatest operas by Richard Wagner — a music drama Parsifal. Wagner drew the inspiration for the creation of his opera in the epics Parzival by the poet Wolfram von Eschenbach (early 13th century). The composer greatly reworked the original source and his libretto has an independent literary value. Wagner got interested in the subject of Grail during his work on Lohengrin, which was 40 years (!) before he completed Parsifal. During this period, Wagner had composed six operas that became his most famous works. The plot of Parsifal is full of deep philosophical ideas: on the basis of disparate legends Wagner created an independent work, which is based on a conflict between the early Middle Ages Christian worldview and continued paganism. Parsifal is considered one of the world’s most remarkable music dramas.

Wagner on the Mariinsky Label

In September 2010, we released a disc on the Mariinsky Label with a recording of Wagner’s Parsifal. Along with the Mariinsky Theatre Opera Soloists the recording features some guest artists: the part of Parsifal is performed by the tenor Gary Lehman, Kundry part is sung by the soprano Violeta Urmana, and the part of Gurnemanz — by the bass René Pape. The recording has received numerous awards: Disc of the Month according to BBC Music Magazine (UK) and Editor’s Choice in the October 2010 issue of The Gramophone (UK). Prestigious US media Los Angeles Times and New York Times both named this recording CD of the Year.

On March 21st, 24th & 25th, the stage of the Mariinsky Concert Hall will see a series of performances of Benjamin Britten’s opera A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which premiere in a production by Claudia Solti was received in July 2011, at the end of last season. The production was very well received by audiences in St Petersburg — following a couple of performances at the end of last season, it had already been performed eight more times this season, completely breaking existing stereotypes about Britten’s music and proving that it is rather accessible to listeners and carries a very special charm of the English language and bright humour of the original story of William Shakespeare’s comedy.

Like in the first night performance in July last year, an outstanding British bass-baritone Sir Willard White will once again perform the part of Bottom in a performance on March 21st and Valery Gergiev will be conducting. This year the production is nominated for the Russia’s most prestigious National Theatre Award Golden Mask in the category Best Opera Production.

Production photos: costumes and scenery, rehearsals, first night performance.

Original texts: Shakespeare’s comedy.

On March 23rd, at the Mariinsky Concert Hall we are performing a large scale Eighth Symphony by Gustav Mahler, composed for eight vocal soloists, mixed choirs and a large symphony orchestra. Performance of this symphony requires significant vocal and instrumental forces, the piece is frequently referred to as Symphony of a Thousand (although it often employs a smaller number of performers). The Eighth, was Mahler’s last symphony that premiered during his lifetime and was conducted by the composer himself. From the very early stages of composition Mahler was confident in the high meaning of his work, refusing pessimism, which was present in most of his previous compositions. He presented the Eighth Symphony as an expression of confidence in the eternal human spirit. The work is often compared to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony as a defining human statement for its century.

Along with Mariinsky Theatre Opera Soloists, Chorus and Symphony Orchestra under Valery Gergiev, Wales Millennium Centre Only Kids Aloud Chorus from Cardiff will take part in the performance of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony on March 23rd. This concert will be repeated once again on April 1st at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff during our upcoming British tour.

Mahler on the LSO Live

Valery Gergiev and the London Symphony Orchestra have recorded all numbered symphonies by Mahler (from First to Ninth as well as the Adagio from the Tenth, Mahler’s unfinished symphony) and released them on the LSO Live, the Orchestra’s own record label. Mariinsky Theatre opera soloists took part in the recordings of the Second and the Eighth Symphonies.

From March 22nd to April 1st, the stage of the Mariinsky Theatre will be hosting the 12th International Ballet Festival Mariinsky, which is a noticeable annual spring event in the world of ballet. The Festival presents a range of performances of selected works from the ballet repertoire of the Mariinsky Theatre, which along with the soloists of the Mariinsky Ballet, feature famous dancers from prestigious international ballet companies. Every year the Festival brings a new work to the repertoire of the Mariinsky Ballet. This year, after almost a decade, we bring back Le Jeune Homme et La Mort, a ballet by an outstanding French choreographer Roland Petit, who died in July last year. Guest performances by the Béjart Ballet Lausanne will become a highlight — inviting not only individual dancers, but the entire ballet company from another country is a very special project of the Festival this year, which provides a rare opportunity to see the iconic performances by one of the greatest choreographers of the second half of the 20th century. The Festival presents a series of performances by a wide range of choreographers: classical legacy of Marius Petipa and George Balanchine, unique style of Danish ballet by August Bournonville, contemporary ballets by Angelin Preljocaj and Alexei Ratmansky, as well as an evening starring Diana Vishneva, which demonstrates her individual style and dazzling technique through sensual, expressive works by Martha Graham, Paul Lightfoot and Sol León. The International Stars Gala will bring the Festival to a close.

A pair of concerts on March 24th & 25th on the stage of the Munich Philharmonie will continue a joint project between the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, the Mariinsky Theatre and Valery Gergiev, which is aimed to present a complete cycle of fifteen symphonies by Dmitri Shostakovich during the 2011/12 concert season in Munich. The project started in November last year and continued in December — four Shostakovich’s symphonies had been performed by the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Valery Gergiev. In March, the Chorus and Symphony Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre take over from our Munich colleagues — during the two evenings we shall perform a series of five symphonies by Shostakovich (Second, Third, Eighth, Twelfth and Thirteenth), including those three that require a choir. The project will continue with a pair of concerts in May, when the Mariinsky Theatre Symphony Orchestra will perform the Sixth, Seventh, Ninth and Tenth Symphonies by Shostakovich. Valery Gergiev will complete the cycle of Shostakovich’s symphonies in the Bavarian capital with two more concerts in July, conducting the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra then.

Valery Gergiev, who believes the value and impact of Shostakovich’s symphonic legacy to the world of music is great, had previously presented the complete cycle of his symphonies in world’s most important music capitals and concert halls: New York, London, St Petersburg and Vienna.

Shostakovich on the Mariinsky Label

Six of the fifteen Shostakovich’s symphonies, as well as his opera The Nose, were recorded and released on the Mariinsky Label, Mariinsky Theatre’s own record label. Production of a recording of all Shostakovich’s symphonies in an advanced SACD format is one of the directions of the development of the Mariinsky Label, as seen by Valery Gergiev.

On March 27th & 28th, on the stage of the Polish National Opera in Warsaw (Teatr Wielki Opera Narodowa), we are presenting Prokofiev’s opera War and Peace in a landmark production by Andrei Konchalovsky. The premiere of this large-scale production was received at the Mariinsky Theatre in the Spring of 2000. This is our co-roduction with the Metropolitan Opera, New York. It had also been taken by the Mariinsky Theatre on tour in Milan (Teatro alla Scala), London (Royal Opera House, Covent Garden), Madrid (Teatro Real), Tokyo (NHK Hall) and Washington D.C. (Kennedy Center for the the Performing Arts).

Prokofiev’s opera War and Peace based on the novel by Leo Tolstoy is one of the best examples of expressing the famous literary work through the language of music and opera. According to Dmitri Shostakovich, “...Prokofiev could not but understand the enormous difficulty of the task he set for himself — to implement in musical and scenic images the main idea and the very atmosphere of Leo Tolstoy’s grand historical epic... By the feeling of a man of genius Prokofiev succeeded in finding that innermost and fundamental nerve which reveals the very essence of musical-dramatic development which enables the listener to imagine from one musical grain the character and the environment, even the landscape...” (October 1959). Andrei Konchalovsky’s production features cinematic expressiveness emphasising key scenes of the opera.

On March 29th, the Mariinsky Theatre Symphony Orchestra under Valery Gergiev will take part in the Beethoven Festival in Warsaw, performing works by Russian classics — Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto (piano part performed by Alexei Volodin) and Prokofiev’s cantata Alexander Nevsky (along with the Choir of the Podlasie Opera and Philharmonic in Białystok and Yekaterina Semenchuk).

From March 31st to April 6th, Mariinsky Theatre Opera Soloists, Chorus and Symphony Orchestra and Valery Gergiev will be touring Great Britain. During the Holy Week before the Catholic Easter in each of the three cities of this tour we will perform Wagner’s opera Parsifal, which is based on a conflict between the early Middle Ages Christian worldview and continued paganism. In Cardiff, together with the Wales Millennium Centre Only Kids Aloud Chorus, we shall perform Mahler’s Symphony No. 8, full of an expression of confidence in the eternal human spirit. In London, we will perform Verdi’s Messa da Requiem — a musical setting of the Roman Catholic funeral mass. Few pieces in the repertoire offer the drama of opera and the thrill of wonderful symphonic writing combined with stellar, virtuosic solo moments. Verdi’s Requiem does all that and more. The Mariinsky Theatre enjoys close long-term connections with each of the three music venues in Cardiff, London and Birmingham.

In April 2005, the Mariinsky Ballet was among one of the first guest companies that performed on the stage of the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff, which was officially opened in November 2004. In December 2006, the Mariinsky Opera presented there a production of Wagner’s opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen. Tickets for these performances were completely sold out during the first four hours from the start of ticket sales. In October 2009, the Mariinsky Opera made a further visit to Cardiff with three performances at the Wales Millennium Centre.

The Mariinsky Theatre Opera and Orchestra had been regularly performing in London on the stage of the Barbican Concert Hall as part of the venue’s Great Performers series. In February 2005, we presented there masterpieces of Russian opera: The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevronia by Rimsky-Korsakov, The Nose by Shostakovich, Les Noces and Oedipus Rex by Stravinsky. In December 2006, the Symphony Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre and Valery Gergiev completed there the complete cycle of Shostakovich’s symphonies, which was dedicated to the centenary of the composer — we performed six of the fifteen symphonies. In January 2009, the Mariinsky Opera again presented there some of the Russian finest operas: The Queen of Spades by Tchaikovsky, The Daemon by Rubinstein, and The Brothers Karamazov by Alexander Smelkov.

The Symphony Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre under Valery Gergiev were the first foreign team, who gave a concert on the stage of the Birmingham Symphony Hall in August 1991, only two months after it was officially opened by HM The Queen Elizabeth II. Symphony Hall is famous for its perfect acoustics and is considered one of the best concert halls in the world. Over the last twenty years, the Mariinsky Opera and Orchestra under Valery Gergiev made a number of visits to Birmingham with performances at the Symphony Hall.

This month sees the official release date of our 14th recording on the Mariinsky Label, our own record label — opera Don Quichotte, Jules Massenet’s comédie-héroïque, a tale of heroism, adventure and unrequited love. The plot relates only indirectly to the great novel by Miguel de Cervantes and more likely refers to the play Le chevalier de la longue figure, by the poet Jacques Le Lorrain. Massenet, nearing the end of his career, probably personally identified with the character of Don Quichotte, and fell in love with the mezzo-soprano Lucy Arbell, who played Dulcinée in the first performance of the work.

The role of Don Quichotte was one of the most notable achievements of the great Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin, to whom the part was specifically conceived. On this record, the title role is performed by a famous bass Ferruccio Furlanetto, to whom the role of Don Quichotte presents one of the most significant achievements in his extensive musical career. The part of Dulcinée performed by Anna Kiknadze and Andrei Serov sings the part of Sancho Pança. Other parts are performed by soloists of the Academy of Young Opera Singers of the Mariinsky Theatre.

Don Quichotte joins a series of operas recorded on the Mariinsky Label along with recordings of operas by Shostakovich, Shchedrin, Stravinsky, Wagner and Donizetti.