While the season remains closed, ticket sales at other box-offices continue to operate on a summer hour working basis. Box-offices at the Mariinsky Theatre (1, Teatralnaya Square) and at the Mariinsky Concert Hall (37, Dekabristov Street) will be closed from July 23 until September 2. Box-offices at the Bolshoi Gostiny Dvor (corner of the Nevskaya and Perinnaya Lines, mezzanine level) and the Central Railways Ticket Office (24, Griboyedov Canal Embankment, ground floor) will operate on a summer hour basis: Monday to Friday, 11:00AM to 6:00PM, closed from 2:00PM to 3:00PM, and closed all day on Saturdays and Sundays. From September 18 all box-offices will be open as usual.

You can always purchase tickets via the official web-site of the Mariinsky Theatre by selecting seats on a plan and paying with your bank card — this is a fast, easy and secure way of buying tickets to the Mariinsky Theatre. Thanks to our recently introduced e-ticket service, you can now print your tickets by yourself, then using them to enter the Mariinsky Theatre or the Mariinsky Concert Hall, just like usual tickets. This way, you are saving your time: no need queueing to the box-office in order to collect tickets purchased.

During the off-season time, we wish to announce the launch of a project that is aimed at communicating with our audiences via the Internet and social media. For eight weeks, from July 24 to September 17, we are going to publish one question a day on the Mariinsky Theatre pages on Facebook, Twitter and VKontakte. Questions will be from a general range of topics related to arts, music, activities of the Mariinsky Theatre and, well, summer mood :-). We believe this project should bring together our audiences during the period when there are no events at the Mariinsky Theatre or the Mariinsky Concert Hall and will hopefully open new opportunities for discussing various issues and communicating using a set of familiar web-based things.

Questions will be posted daily on the Mariinsky Theatre pages on Facebook (in English), VKontakte (in Russian) and Twitter (in English as well as in Russian). If you are on any of these social networks you are very welcome to join us! Simply watch for our questions and feel free to answer whatever you want. All questions and answers will be published on the Mariinsky Theatre web-site at the end of our off-season summer quiz.

Last week at the Munich Philharmonie, Valery Gergiev has completed a joint project between the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra and the Mariinsky Theatre — performance of the complete Shostakovich Symphonies cycle during the 2011/12 concert season in Munich. The project had started with concerts by the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra performing Symphonies Nos. 1 & 4 in November last year and Symphonies Nos. 5 & 14 in December. The Mariinsky Theatre Symphony Orchestra and Chorus took over from the Munich band this March, playing Symphonies Nos. 2, 3, 8, 12 & 13 over a pair of evenings. Two further concerts by the Mariinsky Orchestra in May featured a performance of Symphonies Nos. 6, 7, 9 & 10. One of these concerts was broadcast live on a Russian television channel 100TV, these recordings are available to watch online on the channel web-site — the Ninth and the Seventh (Leningrad) Symphonies. Finally, Valery Gergiev has conducted a pair of concerts with the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra last week (on July 18 & 19) that featured Symphonies Nos. 11 & 15, thus concluding the Shostakovich Symphony cycle in the Bavarian capital.

Maestro Gergiev, who believes great value and impact of Shostakovich’s legacy to the world of music, had previously conducted the complete Shostakovich Symphonies cycle in the world’s most important music cities: London, New York, St Petersburg and Vienna, not to mention numerous performances of selected symphonies all over the world. During a pair of seasons 2012/13 and 2013/14 Valery Gergiev will conduct the complete cycle of instrumental concertos and symphonies by Shostakovich in Paris, at the Salle Pleyel, performed by the Mariinsky Orchestra and Chorus and featuring world-class instrumentalists. This project will kick off with a pair of concerts on January 7 & 8, 2013.

To date, six of fifteen Shostakovich’s symphonies (Nos. 1, 2, 3, 10, 11 & 15), as well as his opera The Nose, have been recorded and released on the Mariinsky Label, the Mariinsky Theatre’s record label. Recording of the complete Shostakovich cycle is one of a few directions the Mariinsky Label expands its catalogue. You can learn more about these and other recordings on the Mariinsky Label official web-site.