MOSCOW, September 12. /TASS/. Bolshoi Theater is opening its 242nd second with Modest Mussorgsky’s opera ‘Boris Godunov’.
Before the opening performance of the season, the whole company will get together at a traditional general meeting. They will be shown a video featuring the main events of the previous season. Chief Conductor Tugan Sohiyev and the ballet troupe director, Mahar Vaziyev, will speak about the creative plans of the theater for the coming season, the Bolshoi press attache Yekaterina Novikova told TASS.
In line with tradition, the board of trustees of the theater will award prizes to the best performers.
"By and large, though, we've already made the plans for the new season public," she said.
The chain of operatic premieres is due to begin on September 24 on the theater’s new stage - an affiliation located on the square by the side of the theater’s historic building Camille Saint-Saens’s ‘Carnival of the Animals’ and ‘The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra’ by Benjamin Britten.
‘The Maid of Pskov’ by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in the concert rendition and Handel’s Alcina directed by Katie Mitchell, one of the leading contemporary operatic producers, will continue the list of new opera productions.
The Bolshoi opera company will also add Tchaikovsky’s ‘Queen of Spades’, Verdi’s ‘Un ballo in maschera’ and Puccini’s ‘La Boheme’.
As for the ballet troupe, the new season will be dominated by celebration of the bicentenary anniversary since the birth of Maris Petipa, the dancer and superlative choreographer who spent almost 60 working in Russia. The main festivities devoted to him - two Bolshoi galas - have been scheduled for May 31 and June 1, 2018, at the historic stage of the theater.
‘The Forgotten Land’ by the famous choreographer Jiri Kylian opens the list of new ballet productions this season. Also, the theater plans reviving ‘Coppelia’ by Leo Delibes in the choreographic version by Sergei Vikharev.
One of the top-rated Russian choreographers of our time, Alexei Ratmansky will come up with his own version of Serge Prokofiev’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’. ‘Anna Karenina’ in the production of the acclaimed U.S. choreographer John Neumeier also hold promise of becoming a resounding premiere.
"As for the ballet ‘Nureyev’, the production of which composer Ilya Demutsky, producer Kirill Serebrennikov and choreographer Yuri Posokhov were preparing throughout the previous season, the Bolshoi directorate will inform the media as soon there’s a decision on its future destiny," Novikova said.
‘Nureyev’ was to premiere at the historic stage of the Bolshoi on July 11, days before the closure of the previous season but the directorate decided to reschedule it to a later date, saying the production was still half-baked.
Initially, it was supposed to premier in May 2018 but earlier dates, for instance, in December 2017 were mentioned somewhat later.