In the rhythm of housewarming

The Moscow Musical Theater named after Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko opens a new season

At the troupe's meeting held yesterday, theater director Vladimir Urin spoke about how the troupe continues to inhabit the building, which was renovated (raised from fire ruins) at the beginning of last season. Performances that disappeared during nomadic life are being restored in the repertoire. The ballet will again receive “Bravo, Figaro!”, “The Phantom Ball” and “The Taming of the Shrew” (the best, in the director’s opinion, performances by Dmitry Bryantsev). The theater's chief director, Alexander Titel, promised the opera The Queen of Spades, La Boheme and Betrothal in a Monastery. But there will be many new productions this season.

Alexander Titel called the beginning season “Russian” - there are two premieres on the big stage, and both operas are Russian classics. At the beginning of February, the chief director himself will stage “May Night” (thus celebrating the 100th anniversary of the death of Rimsky-Korsakov; the performance designer will be Vladimir Arefiev, the conductor-producer will be Felix Korobov), and at the end of May the St. Petersburg team (director Gennady Trostyanetsky and artist Semyon Pastukh) will create Rubinstein’s “Demon” in the Musical. The conductor will be Wolf Gorelick. The small stage, meanwhile, will become the territory of ancient opera (Lyudmila Naletova will stage “The Misfortune of the Coach” by Vasily Pashkevich and “The Island of Love” by Antonio Sacchini) and modern opera (the world premiere of “Hamlet” by Vladimir Kobekin will be produced by Alexander Titel and Felix Korobov).

The ballet has fewer premieres, simply because there are so many tours. Throughout the first half of the season, ballet dancers will appear in Moscow only intermittently, working in Germany, Italy and Japan. They will return on December 31 and at the end of winter they will show an evening consisting of “Walpurgis Night” by Leonid Lavrovsky, the grand pas from “Paquita” and the painting “Shadows” from “La Bayadère”. This is a project of Mikhail Lavrovsky, who now heads the ballet troupe of the theater - a dancer and teacher-tutor trained at the Bolshoi Theater wants to bring large-scale classics to the stage of the Musical Theater. The second, already summer, premiere of the season will be the ballet melodrama beloved by all fans of the genre and artists - Musical buys the rights to show “Manon” by Kenneth MacMillan; The performance will be rescheduled by the English production team.

The absence of a ballet troupe is intended to be compensated by the modern dance festival Dance inversion, once again organized by the theater management. In November, troupes from Burkina Faso (Cie Salia ni Seydou), Belgium (Les Ballets C. De la B), Czech Republic (National Theater Ballet), Portugal (National Ballet) and the USA (Hubbard street dance Chicago) will come to Moscow. The Dusseldorf Ballet, which hosted our artists in the fall, will come on tour in April (they will bring “Romeo and Juliet” and “The Rite of Spring”). In the spring, artists from the John Neumeier Theater will appear in the next series of “The Seagulls” in Moscow, and artists from the Musical Theater, in turn, will participate in the German “The Seagulls”. The collaboration with the Moscow theater apparently pleased the Hamburg genius, who produced the premiere here last season - and in addition to the exchange of artists, the Musical Theater ballet was honored to be a special guest at the traditional summer festival in Hamburg.

“The Stone Flower,” which the theater was going to stage in Yuri Grigorovich’s version, was canceled due to the strict requirement of Prokofiev’s heirs to perform all the music verbatim, without cutting anything, and the outdated performance needs a more concise edition. The theater is still dreaming about The Sleeping Beauty, but the director of the theater will give the production only to the choreographer who offers a modern and fresh solution. That is, in fact, the doors are open for young (and not so young) geniuses. If anyone has an idea on how to stage “The Sleeper” today, you are welcome at the Musical Theatre.

Anna GORDEEVA