This Monday in Moscow, the Main Stage of the Bolshoi Theatre hosted an award ceremony of the Russian National Theatre Festival Golden Mask. This year, our theater is marked with awards in two categories. Bass-baritone Willard White is awarded a prize for the Best Male Role in the Opera for his performance of the part of Bottom in our production of Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Zinovy Margolin received an award for the Best Work of Set Designer for his work on our opera production of Rodion Shchedrin’s Dead Souls.

Golden Mask is recognised as the most prestigious annual Russian National Theatre Festival and Award. According to Festival rules, only new productions that were presented in the previous season may draw into the competition. Both of our productions that received Golden Masks this year were premiered during the season 2010/11: Dead Souls was staged at the Mariinsky Theatre in March 2011 and A Midsummer Night’s Dream received its premiere at the Mariinsky Concert Hall in July 2011.

Our congratulations to Zinovy Margolin and Sir Willard White on their well-deserved awards!

Sunday, April 15th saw the opening night of the 11th Moscow Easter Festival, which runs under the direction of Valery Gergiev and presents about 150 concerts of symphonic, chamber, choral and bell-ringing programs in 36 cities around Russia as well as in Kiev. The Festival runs for 25 days, until May 9th.

The Festival has kicked off at the Grand Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, with a concert by the Mariinsky Theatre Symphony Orchestra under Valery Gergiev and the pianist Daniil Trifonov, Grand Prix winner of the 14th International Tchaikovsky Competition. They presented works by Sergei Prokofiev: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 5 and Piano Concerto No. 1. Next evening we have performed Prokofiev’s Symphonies Nos. 2 & 3, excerpts from his ballet Romeo and Juliet and Piano Concerto No. 2 (piano part by Alexander Toradze).

Prokofiev’s music dominates the current edition of the Moscow Easter Festival: a complete cycle of his symphonies and piano concertos and selected suites will be performed at the Grand Hall of the Moscow Conservatory and in some Russian cities. Four concerts from the Grand Hall of the Moscow Conservatory (on April 15th, 16th, 24th & 25th, starting at 7:00PM, Moscow time) are broadcast live on the French channel Medici TV as well as online at the Mariinsky Theatre media-site on http://mariinsky.tv/n/e. Thus, more and more people from all over the world receive a great opportunity to listen live a unique cycle of Prokofiev’s Symphonies and Piano Concertos performed by the Mariinsky Theatre Symphony Orchestra and Valery Gergiev.

A pair of concerts within the framework of the 11th Moscow Easter Festival will be held in St Petersburg: on April 22nd and May 4th, the Mariinsky Theatre Symphony Orchestra under Valery Gergiev will present unusually programmed concerts of works by Anton Rubinstein, Sergei Prokofiev, Richard Strauss, Igor Stravinsky and Dmitri Shostakovich.

On April 17th, 18th & 19th, the Mariinsky Ballet performed in Switzerland, at the Grand Théâtre de Genève. We are presenting Anna Karenina, a ballet by Rodion Shchedrin, based on Leo Tolstoy’s novel, choreographed by Alexei Ratmansky. This work received its Mariinsky Theatre premiere two years ago. Since then, we presented the ballet on tour in Moscow (at the Golden Mask Festival), New York (at the Metropolitan Opera, as part of the Lincoln Center Festival), London (at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden) and Baden-Baden (at the Festspielhaus). Three nights in Geneva saw three different ballerinas in the title role: Yekaterina Kondaurova (April 17th), Viktoria Tereshkina (April 18th) and Ulyana Lopatkina (April 19th). The part of Count Vronsky will be performed, respectively, by Konstantin Zverev, Vladimir Shklyarov and Andrei Yermakov. Valery Gergiev conducted the performance on April 17th. Last month, Mariinsky Theatre Opera Soloists, Chorus and Orchestra under Valery Gergiev gave a concert at the Grand Théâtre de Genève — we presented a pair of works by Igor Stravinsky: The Firebird ballet music and opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex (starring Gérard Depardieu as the Narrator).