New season at the National Opera

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The country's central musical theater is setting several records this season. The most obvious is the rapid growth in the total number of future premieres of the National Opera; five are expected this year. The most significant is that three of the five scores planned for the production, the oldest of which turned 33 years old this year, were created by Ukrainian composers. About the new season at the National Opera - JULIA BENTEA.

The National Opera began its 139th season earlier than ever, on August 27, and more solemnly than ever. One of the sensational, but far from the most successful premieres of last year - the opera "Moses" by Miroslav Skorik - on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Ivan Franko, displaced the traditional "Taras Bulba" by Nikolai Lysenko. In this shuffling of scores at the opening of the season, it is quite possible to see a prediction for the next year: the theater already agrees to take on modern music, but is not yet ready to take risks on a large scale - and this is what listeners have long expected from the National Opera.

The troupe began rehearsing the ballet “Mirror of Heaven” by Mikhail Chemberzhi and the opera “Boyarina” by Vitaly Kireiko last season, so the listener can fully count on a carefully controlled, high-quality result. Mikhail Chemberzhi is well known in musical circles in Kyiv as an active manager from the Kyiv City Department of Culture, teacher-methodologist, rector of the Children's Academy of Arts, member of the organizing committees and juries of various competitions and festivals. But there is hardly a single music lover who is well acquainted with his musical work, or a meticulous musicologist who will be able to find Mr. Chemberzhi’s name in the programs of Ukrainian contemporary music festivals. Based on the November premiere, it will be possible to judge not only the caliber of Chamberzhi the composer, but also the prospects of the staging tandem of choreographer Aniko Rekhviashvili and conductor Alexei Baklan (the latter, in collaboration with choreographer Viktor Eremenko, prepared the most striking ballet premiere of last year - “The Marriage of Figaro” to the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart).

The premiere of Vitaly Kireiko's opera "Boyaryna" scheduled for February practically coincides with the December 80th anniversary of the maestro, whose creative heyday was in the late 1950s-1970s. Mr. Kireyko is not only a patriot of Ukrainian musical theater, but also of Ukrainian literary classics. “Boyaryna” is already his third work, after the opera “Lisova Pisnya” and the ballet “Orgy”, written based on the plot of Lesya Ukrainka. The fact that the opera will be shown in concert (conducted by Vladimir Kozhukhar) has both pros and cons. The supposed advantage is that stupid mise-en-scenes will not harm the music, the obvious disadvantage is that in the concert version the opera is unlikely to firmly settle in the repertoire of the National Opera and certainly will not appeal to the category of opera lovers who crave spectacle.

In February, the theater will present another premiere - a new production of the opera "Yaroslav the Wise" by Georgy Mayboroda, completed by the composer in 1973 and first performed on the stage of the Kyiv Opera and Ballet Theater in 1975 ("Boyaryna" and "Yaroslav the Wise" are planned to be prepared simultaneously, and for this purpose the opera troupe will be divided). Taking into account the possibilities of the planned work of the then Union of Composers of Ukraine, the epic-dramatic canvas “Yaroslav the Wise” was born under rather strange circumstances: in 1972, the opera based on the dramatic poem by Ivan Kocherga “Yaroslav the Wise” was completed by Julius Meitus, in 1973 by Georgy Mayboroda . The first composer in the musical history of Kievan Rus of the 11th century emphasized politics and wars, the second - on architecture and book love. "Yaroslav the Wise" returns to the repertoire under no less strange circumstances. The initiative for the current production - by the way, strange as it may seem for Kyiv, not supported by a single anniversary date - came from its future director Anatoly Solovyanenko Jr. Who, apparently, after “Moses”, can’t wait to try himself in the “big Soviet style”.

This will be the end of the experiments of Kyiv directors, and those of foreign directors will only begin. In May, together with the Russian choreographer David Avdysh, the theater will repeat last year’s experience with “The Marriage of Figaro” and the opera and ballet project “Forces of Destiny,” when the controversial principle “the plot is separate, the music is separate” threatens to transform into an exceptionally attractive performance. Actually, the ballet “The Master and Margarita” based on Mikhail Bulgakov is a production that has already taken place on the Perm stage, reviews of which can be read in many Russian publications.

It is clear that the ballet troupe, with the help of invited directors and on its own feet, is following the path of building up extreme dance on the backbone of the classical ballet repertoire. But from visiting opera directors in Kyiv they demand rabid, well-selling academicism. In June, at the end of the season, you can expect the second production after last year's Manon Lescaut, very Italian in spirit, directed by Italo Nunziata. The popular Neapolitan opera "Adrienne Lecouvreur" by Francesco Cilea will be conducted by Vladimir Kozhukhar. But even if the country’s best sopranos and tenors are involved in the final premiere of the season, this is unlikely to compensate the theater for material damage from unsold tickets for performances launched in November and February.

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