Ballerinas will perform in heels at the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theater

The Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theater hosted a troupe meeting, at which general director Andrei Borisov, artistic director of the opera troupe and chief director Alexander Titel, artistic director of the ballet Maxim Sevagin and chief conductor Felix Korobov finally announced plans for the upcoming 105th season.

There was no traditional announcement of plans in the spring this year, as well as last year, at the Musical Theater, so the company kept the intrigue until the very beginning of the new season. Theater General Director Andrei Borisov began his opening speech with victorious reports about creative and financial achievements:

“The past season turned out to be successful for our theater. This is expressed in the number of performances we showed: we showed 249 performances on the Main and Small stages, and in the average occupancy of the hall (84.5 percent), and as a consequence in the increase in the theater’s income, and finally, in the geography of tours of the ballet and opera troupes , which we have significantly expanded over the past season (the theater went on tour 9 times, including a large international tour to the Kingdom of Thailand).”

And then he said that the new 105th season will be the “Russian season”: “In this season we will continue to explore the world in which we live – the Russian world, we will look at it from different chronological angles – from antiquity, the 16th century and more modern for us – the 20th century.”

So if the theater closed the 104th season with the opera “Khovanshchina”, which was performed within the walls of the Ryazan Kremlin, then the theater will also open the new 105th season with Russian opera. On September 20, the premiere of the opera “The Tsar’s Bride” by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov will take place, directed by Dmitry Belyanushkin and conducted by Arif Dadashev.

“And besides,” the general director promised, “during the season, we will produce 5 more large performances on the Main Stage and one experimental ballet performance on the Small Stage.”

“What dictated this transition?” he asked himself a question, and answered it. – In addition to ideological reasons, there are also practical considerations: in the current political circumstances, there is a high risk of not receiving sheet music, licenses to perform works by foreign composers and production teams. We must be self-sufficient, but by no means closed. MAMT continues to develop international cooperation despite foreign policy conflicts. In the 105th season, viewers will be treated to a new evening of one-act ballets, which will include performances by choreographers with an international reputation.

Illustrating this thesis, Andrei Borisov said that, for example, 3 more foreign artists from Europe and Japan (Marcello Pelizzoni, Taiga Kodama-Pomfret, Aoi Tanaka), who connected their creative and life paths with Moscow, will join the theater’s ballet troupe. Now Stasik employs 20 foreign artists. Borisov promised that the ballet hit – the work of one of the world’s leading choreographers – will return to the repertoire.

As for the “Russian season,” as the artistic director of the opera troupe Alexander Titel, who took the floor after the general director, said that in addition to “The Tsar’s Bride,” the theater will present premieres of other Russian composers during the season. So in March there will be a premiere of Rodion Shchedrin’s opera “Not Only Love,” written back in 1961, directed by the artistic director of the theater. Pushkin, directed by Evgeny Pisarev, who began his first studies in the opera field with Rossini’s opera “Italian in Algiers” in 2013 in the same “Stasik”.

Another Russian opera will be shown in June, and it will be “Rusalka” by Alexander Dargomyzhsky. It is staged by Titel himself, and his conductor is Timur Zangiev.

Alexander Titel also reported on the results of the theater competition, calling on the artists to check their bank cards, which are about to receive the amounts of incentive bonuses. It should be noted that there were many such winning artists in the opera troupe. The theater’s chief conductor, Felix Korobov, also reported on the results of a similar competition among musicians.

In general, at the troupe’s gathering, incentive bonuses rained down on employees of completely different departments. This year it did not fall only on the heads of ballet dancers, who, meanwhile, are the main guarantor of the glory and financial well-being of the theater on Bolshaya Dmitrovka. Only Anastasia Pershenkova was awarded “for the best work as a teacher-tutor.” But an award of a completely different value went to the “Moscow City Prize in the field of literature and art” – to the artistic director of the ballet troupe Maxim Sevagin, which he, together with MAMT ballet soloist Anastasia Limenko, received from the hands of Mayor Sergei Sobyanin last week, “for the brilliant performance of solo parts in the ballet “The Nutcracker”, choreography by Yuri Possokhov.”

Sevagin’s speech was, as always, brief. He reported on the key premiere of the 105th “Russian season”, which he personally staged on fragments of the IV, V and VI symphonies of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky – according to the ballet artistic director’s description, “the most Russian of Russian composers, whose music very much connects us with Russia.” The premiere of the ballet is scheduled for the twentieth of November, so rehearsals are in full swing at the theater. Moreover, Maxim Sevagin is not only the choreographer of the new ballet, but also the author of its libretto. The conductor of the performance will be Fyodor Beznosikov.

The world’s youngest artistic director has also planned an experimental ballet for the 105th season – “Beauties Can’t Sleep” by composer David Ohanyan and contemporary choreographer Anastasia Vyadro. He did not expand on the essence of the experiment, saying only that it was “for women and about women who will perform in heels.” Costumes for the performance will be designed by the creative director of one of the fashion brands, Nino Shamatava.

Performances by “choreographers with a global reputation,” which both the general director and the ballet artistic director announced in their speeches, will be shown in November and at the finale of the 105th season. In November this is a resumption: the famous ballet “Minus 16” by the world famous Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin, which enjoyed stunning success at MAMT. And the evening of one-act ballets, scheduled for the end of July, will include the famous ballet “Duende” by the famous Spanish choreographer and ballet artistic director of the Mikhailovsky Theater in St. Petersburg, Nacho Duato, which, however, is already part of the repertoire of the Mikhailovsky Theater, and was created by Duato for the Netherlands Dance Theater (NDT) in The Hague back in 1991. Let us remind you that “Stasik” is the very first Russian theater to show the ballet of the famous Spaniard “Na Floresta” in its repertoire.

Another ballet of the “troika” will be the ballet by San Francisco Ballet choreographer Yuri Posokhov – “Reflections”, staged for the San Francisco Ballet already 18 years ago. And finally, the most intriguing ballet of this evening of contemporary choreographers will be the ballet “The Great Lament” by German choreographer Marco Goecke.

The fact is that not so long ago Hecke became the hero of a loud ballet scandal, when during the intermission at the premiere of his ballet “Faith – Hope – Love” he smeared the face of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper critic Wiebke Hüster with dog feces, writing that same evening on social networks that “ After 20 years of reading the crap that Huester wrote, his patience had finally run out. Naturally, the management of the Hannover State Opera, where Goecke was the director of the ballet, gave the journalist an official apology and announced the dismissal of Marco Goecke from work. But the career of a gifted choreographer with his own sharply individual and unique style did not end there. Now he successfully stages in other European companies, although the number of his invitations to productions has decreased somewhat.

The famous choreographer had already worked with Stasik, transferring there under Laurent Hilaire the ballet “Lonesome George” based on Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 8 about loneliness using the example of a Galapagos tortoise named Lonesome George, the last representative of its species. Now Goecke will transfer his rather fresh ballet to the Musical Theater, which premiered at the Zuiderstrand Theater in 2021.