Stage information – Newspaper Kommersant No. 176 (7377) of 09/23/2022

The Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Academic Musical Theater hosted a meeting of the troupe, at which the general director of the theater Andrey Borisov summed up the results of the previous season, and the artistic directors of opera and ballet Alexander Titel and Maxim Sevagin announced plans for the next. tell Tatyana Kuznetsova and Sergey Hodnev.

The chief conductor Felix Korobov was not present at the gathering of the troupe – he was releasing a ballet performance at La Scala, as Alexander Titel explained with slight envy. But even without him it was clear that in the new season the opera and ballet of the Stanislavsky Museum Theater would follow perpendicular paths. Perhaps because CEO Borisov has clearly stepped aside from the role of a strategist, entrusting planning to creative leaders, between whom there is a fair age difference of half a century. As a result, the repertory plans of the 73-year-old director Alexander Titel turned out to be distinctly conservative. The ideas of the 24-year-old ballet artistic director, on the contrary, are downright revolutionary.

Two opera premieres are promised, and both eloquently remind us that the fatherland will not grow with promising opera directors. The Tsar’s Bride, scheduled for June, is being staged by Titel’s student Dmitry Belyanushkin, whose main achievement so far is the sadly creative Stone Guest at the Bolshoi Theatre. Bellini’s “Norma” is 83-year-old Adolf Shapiro, on whose account the rather successful “Lucia di Lammermoor” in the same Museoteatre (but that was already in 2009) and the controversial “Manon Lescaut” in the Bolshoi. It’s not better with the conductors: the conductor has not yet been approved for the Tsarskaya, and Vladimir Spivakov was invited to the Norma – a mysterious decision, but it is possible that the prima donna of MAMT Khibla Gerzmava took the initiative here.

Of the ballet productions that Maxim Sevagin inherited (his predecessor, the Frenchman Laurent Hilaire left Russia after the start of the SVO), is Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker staged by the Russian American Yuri Possokhov, a world-famous choreographer known for the blockbusters of the Bolshoi Theater – the ballets “A Hero of Our time”, “Nureyev” and “Seagull”. The release of the full-length “The Nutcracker” was repeatedly postponed due to emergency circumstances, now the premiere date has been announced – November 25th. Of the American production team, only costume designer Sandra Woodall remained. The production designer will be Polina Bakhtina, and the debutante, the young maestro Ivan Nikiforchin, one of the winners of the recent Rachmaninov Competition, will stand at the podium.

Three choreographers who are mostly known only in marginal circles of modern dance will also make their debut on the stage of the ballet theater. In April, Konstantin Semenov, an artist from the Stasika Ballet Company, will present Through the Looking-Glass on the Small Stage, an hour-long immersive performance for teenagers based on Carroll’s Alice Through the Looking-Glass. The music for the performance is written by the electronic composer Vasily Peshkov, and Maria Tregubova is responsible for the scenography and costumes.

In June, they will show a “troychatka” of one-act performances by Ksenia Ternavskaya, Pavel Glukhov and artistic director Maxim Sevagin. The artistic director told Kommersant’s observer that he assigned Ksenia Ternavskaya a group composition, and Pavel Glukhov a chamber duet (however, the choreographer insisted on four performers). Sevagin himself is going to undertake the deconstruction of the concert class, choosing the music of Ober and Offenbach for this. In December, he intends to resume (with additions and revisions) his debut ballet on the stage of Stasik – “Bloom” to the music of Antonin Dvorak.

In addition to the modern repertoire, the troupe will be replenished with “contemporary” artists – from November the unpromising Moscow “New Ballet” will join the theater. It seems that the leaders of the MAMT have not yet figured out what to do with this gift from the city department of culture, which was carried away by the “optimization” of theaters. In any case, the general director Borisov kept silent about plans for the New Ballet, promising only to create comfortable working conditions for the newcomers.

However, with the conditions, how it will turn out. According to Kommersant’s information, although the mobilization has not yet affected the creative team, several stage editors have already received summons.