"The Stars of the White Nights" International Ballet and Opera Festival24 May 2013 - 28 July 2013 SCHEDULE 24 May 2013 - 28 July 2013
|
|
Artistic Director – Maestro Valery Gergiev Mariinsky Theatre and Mariinsky Theatre Opera and Concert Hall
The Stars of the White Nights is one of the brightest
stars of the music and theatre universe and has emerged to be one of the most
popular and grandiose music forums in its context and scale.
The Stars of the White Nights Festival was created in
1993 by Valery Gergiev, Mariinsky Theatre Artistic and
General Director. Maestro Gergiev says that he conceived the first Festival as a
"musical gift" to the city from the Mariinsky and its star-artists. From the
very beginning the Festival has been focused on the masterpieces of the world's
music discovering for its audience some rarely performed or undeservedly
forgotten pieces.
The Stars of the White Nights Festival has gained in
strength, popularity and international acclaim. The duration for the Festival it
has expanded from ten days to three months during the last sixteen year.
Renowned conductors and star-artists take as great honour the invitation to
perform at the Stars of the White Nights. Each year the Festival
programme includes the Theater's finest opera and ballet productions, great
symphonic works, masterpieces of chamber music and new premieres.
During
the last years the Festival programme has included the works created by the
great classical composers – Beethoven symphonies, Prokofiev's and Tchaikovsky's operas, ballets and
symphony music. Major events at the Stars have included the production
of Wagner's Der Ring des
Nibelungen, in addition to the Shostakovich and Mahler Symphonies
series.
This festival is a must for ballet, opera and classical music
amateurs. The annual Stars of the White Nights Festival takes an
inspiration for its name from the short summer season when the sun never sets,
and the beauty of St-Petersburg White Nights contributes to the festival's
special atmosphere and its world-class programme of concerts, as audience comes
out of the historic theatre at midnight into daylight to stroll along the
streets of the theatrical setting of St Petersburg.
WHITE NIGHTS 2013: Mariinsky (Kirov) Opera and Ballet
theatre | Mariinsky hall plan |
Mariinsky Slide Show |
Mariinsky 3D View |
About Valery
Gergiev ARCHIVE: 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | History (before
2001)
The XXI Stars of the White
Nights festival opens with a premiere of Alexander Dargomyzhsky’s
opera Rusalka staged by Vasily Barkhatov and designed
by Zinovy Margolin under
the baton of Valery
Gergiev at the Mariinsky-II. The opera
will be performed again on 25 May and 28 and 30 June. The first concert in
the festival’s symphony music programme will take place
on 25 May at the Concert Hall; in commemoration of one
century of the ballet Le Sacre du printemps, Valery
Gergiev will be conducting the music
of Igor Stravinsky’s ballets Petrouchka,
The Firebird and Le Sacre du printemps.
The festival’s key premiere
will be the world premiere of the outstanding
contemporary Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin’s opera The Lefthander which he was
commissioned to write by the theatre specially
for the opening of the new stage and which he has
dedicated to maestro Gergiev. There will be a concert
performance of the opera on 26 June, to be followed
by the premiere of the stage version on 27 and 28 July. The Stage Director
is Alexei Stepanyuk
and the Production Designer is Alexander Orlov.
One ballet premiere at the festival
will be Alexei
Ratmansky’s Concerto DSCH set
to the music of Dmitry
Shostakovich’s Second Piano Concerto.
For the first time at the Mariinsky-II as part
of the Stars of the White Nights
festival there will be a performance of Richard
Wagner’s entire tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen (11, 13, 15 and 16 June). This year marks ten years since
the tetralogy was first performed in the original German
at the Mariinsky Theatre.
The world’s first 3D broadcast of a ballet
during the Stars of the White Nights :
at 21:30 on 6 June there will be a performance
of the ballet Swan Lake in 3D
at the historic Mariinsky Theatre, broadcast live to one thousand
two hundred cinemas in fifty countries throughout the world. A normal
broadcast will be relayed at the same time. The ballet
will also be shown onscreen at the Mariinsky-II.
The lead roles are to be performed by Yekaterina Kondaurova and Timur Askerov. Valery Gergiev will be conducting.
Traditional monograph programmes
at the festival: this year, all of Dmitry Shostakovich’s string quartets
will be performed by the Atrium String Quartet (27, 28 and 29 May), all of Ludwig Van Beethoven’s violin sonatas
will be performed by Leonidas Kavakos together with pianist Enrico Pace (24, 25 and 26 June) and all of Beethoven’s piano concerti
will be performed by Maestro Rudolf Buchbinder (11 and 12 July).
The festival
will be attended by acclaimed musicians from throughout
the world. Guest star violinists at the festival include Leonidas Kavakos who
will be displaying his virtuoso skills on 24, 25 and 26 June. The leader
of Vienna’s The Philharmonics and the orchestra
of the Wiener Staatsoper, violinist and conductor Rainer Honeck will return to St
Petersburg with a dazzling programme of Austrian music which
previously caused a sensation at the Concert Hall: once
again, Rainer
Honeck will be combining works by Mozart and the Strauss family in one concert
(22 June). The violinist Pinchas Zukerman will be performing
again too, this time also appearing as a conductor in a programme
of concerti by Vivaldi and Mozart and works for cello by Max Bruch
(2 and 4 July). Joshua Bell will be performing
Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto together with the National Youth
Orchestra of the United States of America under
the baton of Maestro Valery Gergiev (18 July). Guest music ensembles are
to include two quartets – Atrium String Quartet, one of the greatest
and most popular new quartets on the international music scene,
with a programme of all of Dmitry Shostakovich’s quartets over
three evenings (27, 28 and 29 May),
and the unique Borodin Quartet in a programme
of quartets by Tchaikovsky and Brahms (3 July). The list of guest pianists is also highly
promising. There will be chamber recitals by Daniil Trifonov (3 June) and Alexei Volodin (17 June). Christian Blackshaw
will be performing a chamber music programme; this time he
will accompany British mezzo-soprano Alice Coote who is to perform
Schubert’s song cycle Winterreise. Maestro Rudolf Buchbinder
will be performing all of Beethovens piano concerti with the Mariinsky Orchestra,
also appearing as a conductor. Alexander Toradze
will be performing the solo in Dmitry Shostakovich’s Second Piano Concerto with
the London Symphony Orchestra and maestro Maestro Valery Gergiev (26 May). Regular festival guest Maestro Denis Matsuev
will be performing Sergei
Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto with
the theatre’s orchestra under the baton of Maestro Valery Gergiev (14 June).
A member of the renowned Jдrvi conducting
dynasty will take to the stand of the Mariinsky
Orchestra: Paavo Jarvi (7 July).
Two acclaimed
ballet companies will be appearing at the festival:
the Batsheva Dance Company from Israel, an outstanding modern dance company
with original choreography which is developing its own revolutionary techniques
in movement (9 and 10 June), and Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT-1), one of the most
famous dance ensembles in the world and respected for its
exceptional performance levels, which will be presenting two ballets
by choreographers Sol Leуn and Paul Lightfoot (Sehnsucht and Schmetterling (3 and 4 July).
Among symphony orchestras appearing
at the festival will be the London Symphony
Orchestra, one of the greatest symphony ensembles in the world
and of which Maestro Valery Gergiev became Principal
Conductor in 2007. This will be the orchestra’s second visit
to the Stars of the White Nights festival. Under
the maestro’s baton the orchestra will perform Hector Berlioz’ Symphonie fantastique (26 May) and Dmitry Shostakovich’s Second Piano
Concerto (with Alexander Toradze as soloist). The State Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra
under Vladimir Fedoseyev is making its festival debut.
The programme of their concert includes Mozart’s Forty-First Symphony and Peter Tchaikovsky’s Manfred symphony
(11 June). Also making its festival debut
will be the National Youth Orchestra of the United
States of America under the baton of maestro Valery Gergiev
(18 July).
Chamber ensembles
at the festival will be represented
by the Venice Baroque Orchestra, one of the most famous
ensembles in the world performing baroque music, which
will be appearing with a programme of works by Vivaldi, Telemann and Handel. The musicians will be performing with
the orchestra’s founder and conductor Andrea Marcon and the acclaimed singer
Magdalena Kozena, a mezzo-soprano who has a brilliant grasp
of the style of music of the age (18 June). A long-standing friend
of the Mariinsky Theatre, Maestro Yuri Bashmet (GRAMMY WINNER 2007 "Best Small
Ensemble Performance - Best Conductor") will be appearing
once again at the Concert Hall with his own orchestra, the Chamber Ensemble "Moscow Soloists" (GRAMMY WINNER 2007
"Best Small Ensemble Performance - Best Ensemble") (28 June). Moreover, the talented
Viennese musicians in The Philharmonics will be making a repeat
appearance at the Mariinsky-II (1 July).
The ballet
playbill, in addition to festival premieres, includes
the best repertoire productions and recent premieres such as Sasha Waltz’ production of Sacre (this
version will be performed on the same evening as
the original Le Sacre du printemps with choreography
by Nijinsky, revived for the Mariinsky
Theatre by ballet mistress Millicent Hodson), ballets by George Balanchine, all of Peter Tchaikovsky’s ballets (Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty
and The Nutcracker)
and the repertoire ballets The Fountain of Bakhchisarai,
La Bayadere, Don Quixote, Romeo and Juliet and Le Corsaire. Such leading Mariinsky
Ballet soloists as Ulyana Lopatkina, Diana Vishneva, Yekaterina Kondaurova, Daria Pavlenko, Alina Somova, Danila Korsuntsev, Vladimir Shklyarov, Alexander Sergeyev and Andrei Yermakov will be appearing in these
performances.
A musical
at the festival: the audience favourite My Fair Lady (musical in two acts) by Frederick Loewe
returns to the Mariinsky Theatre (production by Robert
Carsen, 18, 19, 20 and 21 July). Magnificent voices
of outstanding opera stars at the festival: Ferruccio Furlanetto in his finest role
as Don Quichotte in the eponymous opera
by Massenet (29 June), Liudmyla Monastyrska in
the lead role in Tosca (19 July), Olga Borodina in Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem (5 June), Anna Netrebko in a Verdi gala and in Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem
(10 and 23 June), Yevgeny Nikitin in Der Fliegende Hollander (24 June)
and Maria Guleghina in Bellini’s Norma (17 July)
and in Verdi’s Macbeth (20 July). On 17 June there
will be a Chaliapin Gala on the eve
of the International Summer Universiade in Kazan.
Highlights in brief:
• Over ten weeks,
the festival will see some hundred and twenty performances
and concerts featuring various guest artists, opera and ballet
soloists and the Mariinsky chorus and orchestra
• Festival PREMIERES: Alexander Dargomyzhsky’s OPERA Rusalka staged by Vasily Barkhatov; Alexei Ratmansky’s ballet Concerto Dsch to music
by Dmitry Shostakovich, world premiere of Rodion Shchedrin’s opera The Lefthander
• Guest solo
instrumentalists at the festival:
Pianists: Alexander Toradze, Alexei Volodin, Daniil Trifonov, Maestro Denis Matsuev, Christian Blackshaw And Ferhan and Ferzan Onder
Violinists: Joshua Bell, Leonidas Kavakos, Rainer Honeck and Pinchas Zukerman
Quartets: Atrium String Quartet and The State Borodin Quartet
• Guest
ensembles at the festival: the Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra under Vladimir Fedoseyev, the Venice Baroque Orchestra,
the London Symphony Orchestra under Maestro Valery Gergiev, the National
Youth Orchestra of the United States of America and The Philharmonics • Opera stars at the festival: Olga Borodina, Ekaterina Gubanova, Maria Guleghina, Liudmyla Monastyrska, Anna Netrebko, Yekaterina Semenchuk, Albina Shagimuratova,
Ildar Abdrazakov, Alexei Markov, Yevgeny Nikitin, Mikhail Petrenko And Ferruccio Furlanetto
• Monograph programmes at the festival: all
of Dmitry Shostakovich’s quartets and all
of Ludwig van Beethoven’s violin sonatas
and piano concerti
With the support
of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation
General sponsor of the festival
and of the premiere of Alexander Dargomyzhsky’s opera
Rusalka: VTB Bank Principal partners
of the festival: Countess Yoko Nagae Ceschina, Savings
Bank of the Russian Federation Principal sponsors
of the festival: TOTAL, Mercury Group, Federal Grid
Company of Unified Energy System, BP, TeliaSonera, Alrosa
Sponsors of the festival: MDM Bank, Rostec
State Corporation, BOMBARDIER, Sistema, Vnesheconombank, PricewaterhouseCoopers,
Renova Group, Severstal Sponsor of the grand gala
concert: Evrofinance Mosnarbank
About "The Stars of the White Nights"
Festivals
The Stars of the White
Nights is one of the brightest stars of the music and theatre universe and
has emerged to be one of the most popular and grandiose music forums in its
context and scale.
The Stars of the White Nights Festival was created in
1993 by Valery Gergiev, Mariinsky Theatre Artistic and
General Director.Maestro Gergiev says that he conceived the first Festival as a
"musical gift" to the city from the Mariinsky and its star-artists. From the
very beginning the Festival has been focused on the masterpieces of the world's
music discovering for its audience some rarely performed or undeservedly
forgotten pieces.
The Stars of the White Nights Festival has gained in
strength, popularity and international acclaim. The duration for the Festival it
has expanded from ten days to three months during the last sixteen year.
Renowned conductors and star-artists take as great honour the invitation to
perform at the Stars of the White Nights. Each year the Festival
programme includes the Theater's finest opera and ballet productions, great
symphonic works, masterpieces of chamber music and new premieres.
During
the last years the Festival programme has included the works created by the
great classical composers – Beethoven symphonies, Prokofiev's and Tchaikovsky's operas, ballets and
symphony music. Major events at the Stars have included the production
of Wagner's Der Ring des
Nibelungen, in addition to the Shostakovich and Mahler Symphonies
series.
This festival is a must for ballet, opera and classical music
amateurs. The annual Stars of the White Nights Festival takes an
inspiration for its name from the short summer season when the sun never sets,
and the beauty of St-Petersburg White Nights contributes to the festival's
special atmosphere and its world-class programme of concerts, as audience comes
out of the historic theatre at midnight into daylight to stroll along the
streets of the theatrical setting of St Petersburg.
WHITE NIGHTS 2013: Mariinsky (Kirov) Opera and Ballet
theatre | Mariinsky hall plan |
Mariinsky Slide Show |
Mariinsky 3D View |
About Valery
Gergiev ARCHIVE: 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | History (before
2001)
SCHEDULE 24 May 2013 - 28 July 2013
|