The Moscow Academic Musical Theater missed several artists at the opening of the season

Despite the fact that the season at the Moscow Academic Musical Theater of Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko began on September 10, the gathering of the troupe took place only now. The ballet troupe “Stasika” with “Swan Lake” toured with great success, first in Bangkok, and then moved to Krasnoyarsk, where, as part of the Golden Mask festival, they showed an evening of modern choreography.

Opening the 104th season, both the general director of the theater Andrey Borisov, and the artistic directors of opera and ballet Alexander Titel and Maxim Sevagin were brief and laconic. The theater managers summed up the results of the previous season and announced plans for the next one.

“Despite the obvious difficulties, the past season was successful for us: we played a total of 210 opera and ballet performances, more than 130 thousand spectators visited the theater. In a number of indicators, we have approached the pre-pandemic seasons. In extremely difficult conditions, both in opera and in ballet, we were able to present an original program,” Andrey Borisov said at the beginning of his speech, who also outlined the key principle of the theater’s artistic policy, “The balance of traditions and renewal is what distinguishes our theater historically, then what we are striving for. The program of the new season includes performances of large and small art forms, of different aesthetic orientation. The production teams of the new season are both masters and young directors who have made themselves known lately.”

Andrei Borisov also informed about the New Ballet troupe joining the Musical Theater in November. “We will do everything to make new artists feel good and comfortable, but at the same time we understand our responsibility and after some time, somewhere in a year, certification will be held to understand how the artists of this theater will fit into our ballet troupe. I really hope they find their place.”

The general director also took care of the pressing everyday problems of the artists. The troupe greeted him with applause when he announced that from now on a complex dinner at the theater will not cost more than 220 rubles. But this is not a record in theater Moscow – for example, in Vakhtangov, a four-course dinner costs 135 rubles.

This is Maxim Sevagin’s first season as artistic director. The 25-year-old choreographer was appointed to an important post after leaving in March of this year in connection with the start of a special operation by the former artistic director of the etoi of the Paris Opera, Laurent Hilaire. And it doesn’t start well for the youngest artistic director in the world. After his appointment, many Stasik artists left the troupe. So, not seeing any prospects for himself, such a wonderful dancer as Boris Zhurilov left the troupe. At the gathering of the troupe, I heard about the intention to leave the company of another soloist of the theater, Leonid Leontiev. There are also rumors about the departure of the prima ballerina Maria Beck from the theater. Such promising artists as Ksenia Abdukarimova and Georgy Stelmakh left for Vladivostok for the Primorsky Stage of the Mariinsky Theatre…

The new artistic director began his speech, remembering with good words the former director Laurent Hilaire, who, in his words, “educated not only the public, but also the artists”, and created in the theater “a platform for pushing, for the birth of completely new performances on the stage.”

The main premiere of the season is the long-standing project of the Musical Theater, the ballet The Nutcracker, which for the stage of Stasik is transferred by such a fashionable choreographer as Yury Possokhov from the repertoire of some insignificant American company, where Tchaikovsky previously staged this ballet. This choreographer is best known in theatrical Moscow for such ballets as Nureyev, Magrittomania, A Hero of Our Time, and in Moscow he has recently staged a lot. The season before last, he performed for the Bolshoi Theater a sensational ballet based on Chekhov’s play The Seagull. And this season he plans to stage The Queen of Spades for the main theater of the country, also to the music of Tchaikovsky and composer Yuri Krasavin.

Compared to the American version of The Nutcracker for the Moscow troupe, the ballet will be remade and expanded, and is practically a new version. Possokhov began rehearsals of The Nutcracker at the theater quite a long time ago, and the ballet had already been announced several times in the plans under Laurent Hilaire, but for various reasons the dates were postponed. As the project progressed, the American team that was supposed to carry it out also changed, and as a result, the ballet will be released to the audience in the scenography by Polina Bakhtina, the lighting designer is Nirek Tumanyan, and the video artist is Sergey Rylko. The costume designer was left over from the old American team, Sandra Woodall, and the young conductor Ivan Nikiforochkin will be the production conductor.

The new artistic director of the ballet did not explain anything about the fate of Vasily Vainonen’s classic The Nutcracker, beloved by the audience, which has been running in the theater for more than 30 years since the beginning of the 90s. It should be noted that in the presence of such a popular version of this ballet as Vainonen’s version, it could be postponed for the theater to replace it with a new version, because Stasik’s repertoire has never had another ballet by Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty, which is more useful at the moment. moment for the troupe. The premiere of the new “Nutcracker” will take place on November 25, 26 and 27.

Another ballet project of the theater, which was also supposed to be shown last season, is the ballet by Maxim Sevagin himself to the music of Antonin Dvorak Bloom. This is a renewal. The ballet was originally staged by the new artistic director of the ballet troupe back in his time as an ordinary corps de ballet dancer under Laurent Hilaire for the choreographic workshops of the theater. But now, according to the artistic director, it will also be “expanded and modified.”

The theater, like other ballet companies in the country, now apparently has problems with inviting choreographers, because a new artistic director is staging several of his works for him this season. Another, this time already a new one-act ballet, Maxim Sevagin should show in the summer, as part of the program, along with other choreographers: Pavel Glukhov and Ksenia Ternavskaya. This time he chose the music of Daniel Aubert and Jacques Offenbach, and Felix Korobov, musical director of Stasik, will be the conductor and director of the new ballet. Maxim Sevagin plans to stage a new ballet in the spirit of the popular ballet genre – “class-concerts”.

Maxim Sevagin has already presented the ballets of both Ksenia Ternavskaya and Pavel Glukhov to the audience of the Musical Theater at the last season’s Gala Concert called Program No. 1. The new ballets of these choreographers, according to the artistic director, will continue to develop the Stasik artists in a modern direction.

There will also be a ballet premiere at Stasik this season on the Small Stage, scheduled for April. Moreover, it is designed not so much for adult viewers, but mainly for children and adolescents. The ballet “Through the Looking Glass” based on the children’s book by the English mathematician and writer Lewis Carroll will be staged by another participant in the “Program No. 1” dancer “Stasika” Konstantin Semenov. For this performance, the theater specially ordered new music from the composer Vasily Peshkov, and the new ballet is conceived as immersive, that is, the audience will be able to take part in it, including directly.

Naturally, Maxim Sevagin introduced at the gathering of the troupe new artists who joined the ballet troupe, and also announced movements along the “career ladder”: so German Borsay and Innokenty Yuldashev became the leading soloists, Yulia Balasheva became the first soloist, and Joshua Triya and Enkhmunkh Oyunbold became the second soloists .

The opera plans for the 104th season have two premieres: “Norma” by Vincenzo Bellini directed by Adolf Shapiro (stage conductor – Vladimir Spivakov) is scheduled for early March, and “The Tsar’s Bride” by Rimsky-Korsakov (director – Dmitry Belyanushkin) is scheduled for June .

By tradition, as always, they noted the achievements of their employees at the gathering of the troupe. And some of them were congratulated on the round and non-round dates of work in the theater. True, for some reason, they were congratulated selectively and not everyone: last season, the wonderful dancer Roman Malenko, who once led almost the entire ballet repertoire in the troupe, was not congratulated last season on the 25th anniversary of his work in the theater. This error has not been corrected yet. And this is far from the only long-term employee of the theater whom they forgot to congratulate.

The gathering of the troupe ended with another theatrical tradition – a film skit. Under the former general director of this theater, Vladimir Urin, such a tradition existed in Stasik for a long time, but with his transfer to the Bolshoi, after him it moved to the main theater of the country. The new CEO from this season decided to renew it. So now, as many years ago, the theater staff opened their 104th theatrical season with laughter.