The gala concert for the 240th anniversary of the Mariinsky Theater took place on its new stage

The gala concert for the 240th anniversary of the Mariinsky Theater took place on its new stage (“Mariinsky-2”). Maestro Valery Gergiev stood at the podium for five hours, with two intermissions, conducting his best opera and ballet forces in a predominantly Russian repertoire. Tells Vladimir Dudin.

It is difficult to say whether Empress Maria Alexandrovna (after whom the historic building of the Mariinsky Theater was named in 1860) would be happy to know that at the fifth hour of the gala evening in 2023, people would run out of the “hall” in droves, rushing to get to public transport or simply tired from endless numbers squeezed into the program in order to embrace the immensity. Perhaps the marathon timing would have amused Catherine II (by whose decree the Bolshoi Stone Theater was founded on Carousel Square in 1783), whose court, in the absence of cinema, television, and especially digital gadgets, took many hours of evenings accompanied by singers and “dancers” for granted. Today, the five-hour gala concert on the occasion of the 240th anniversary, perhaps, would have been justified if we had been shown an ingenious concept that explained why all these diamonds, which “cannot be counted in stone caves,” were collected over two and a half centuries, – but this did not happen.

Although the concert took as its starting point the overture to the opera “Ruslan and Lyudmila” by Glinka, which premiered in 1842 on the stage of the same Bolshoi (Kamenny) Theater, the entire subsequent filling of the program was most similar to Marshak’s “Baggage”: all acquired belongings to the maximum and a little more, and not in the order of a neat collector’s catalog, but of a bustling oriental bazaar. It’s as if we’ve already given a brilliant overture, but let’s insert another one – Shostakovich’s “Festive”, composed for the 37th anniversary of the October Revolution, only because it “reminiscent of Glinka’s music” (and at the same time, obviously, the time of the struggle against formalism) . It would seem that they have worked on the maestro’s favorite opera, Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina, in the form of Shaklovity’s aria “The Archer’s Nest Sleeps,” which was performed by baritone Vladislav Sulimsky with a lump in his throat. But we must also add a long choral scene and Khovansky’s aria “Children, my children,” which, of course, was sung and played very expressively by Vladimir Vaneev. Here the luxurious Delilah in the guise of mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Semenchuk has already completely seduced Samson with her third aria “Mon coeur s’ouvre a ta voix” from “Samson and Delilah” by Saint-Saëns, but let’s also complete the timing with the ballet duet from “Bacchanalia” to be sure. from there. It’s good that they haven’t yet thought of finishing off the audience with “Polovtsian Dances” after two arias from Borodin’s “Prince Igor” – Igor and Khan Konchak, who appeared as Evgeny Nikitin and the tall, charismatic Miroslav Molchanov.

The desire of the unfortunate editors of the concert to hurt their foreheads, but to please everyone at all costs, combined with the clumsy grimaces of the director’s decisions, also led to funny incidents. Against the backdrop of the scenery from Prokofiev’s “Love for Three Oranges,” where the Queen of the Night had just sparkled with her aria, embodied by soprano Aigul Khismatullina, who hastily replaced the previously announced Albina Shagimuratova, bass Mikhail Petrenko suddenly began to belt out the Burlatsky hit “Hey, Let’s Whoop.” Behind him, as if from a Venetian lagoon, came a male chorus of blackshirts, who found themselves in the role of aesthete barge haulers pulling virtual gondolas. The wretchedness of the artistic solutions in the stage design contrasted sharply with the musical beauties rushing from the orchestra pit – as if the hood of a Cossack had been attached to a Mercedes. So, for example, all Western European masterpieces like Puccini’s “Tosca” and “Turandot”, Verdi’s “Forces of Destiny”, Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” were performed in the deep shadow of the tower columns a la Russe located on the stage. But it was precisely in these settings that Irina Churilova enchanted with her skillful vocals in Leonora’s prayer “Pace, pace” from Verdi’s “Force of Destiny”, and the Callas-like Tatyana Serzhan in a scene from Puccini’s “Tosca” together with Ariunbaatar Ganbaatar. A long-awaited participant in the gala (in the absence of the Mariinsky’s main opera star Anna Netrebko) was soprano Elena Stikhina in Lisa’s aria at the Kanavka. Ildar Abdrazakov, the current king of the bass, gave a monologue about the sorrow of the soul from Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov”; Zinaida Tsarenko said goodbye to forests and fields in Joanna’s aria from Tchaikovsky’s The Maid of Orleans, and Vladislav Sulimsky, together with mezzo Yulia Matochkina, flaunted the art of the singer-actor in a scene from Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tsar’s Bride.

The name of Rodion Shchedrin (who could have been among the guests, but he was not) arose only in connection with Varvara’s ditties from the opera “Not Only Love,” performed with the utmost directness by Ekaterina Semenchuk. But there was also a ballet landing. Diana Vishneva was responsible for Preljocaj’s “The Park,” Victoria Tereshkina was responsible for the legacy of Anna Pavlova and Ulyana Lopatkina in “The Dying Swan,” Renata Shakirova masterfully performed Kitri’s fouette from Minkus’ “Don Quixote,” and Vladimir Shklyarov appeared as the evergreen Romeo in a scene from Prokofiev’s ballet. Verdi listened to the table song from La Traviata well after midnight at this vigil, almost according to the monastery rules, and was already about crawling.