What will the New Opera Theater in Moscow show in the 2023/24 season

The Moscow Novaya Opera Theater announced the events of the 2023/24 season. Among the most notable events are Wagner directed by Konstantin Bogomolov and an innovative interpretation of Stravinsky’s Les Noces. comment Tatyana Kuznetsova And Sergey Hodnev.

The season will open on October 6 with the premiere of Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman, dedicated to the 180th anniversary of the opera (it was first performed in Dresden in 1843). In fact, the eventfulness here is not just “Danish”: firstly, this is the first experience of a full-fledged co-production of two domestic theaters. A convenient practice that allows opera houses to save a lot (primarily on scenery: in this case, their set simply moves from one theater to another, and is not created anew on the spot), has been widespread in the world for a long time, and, say, the Bolshoi Theater cooperated in this way and with the Bavarian National Opera, and with the Met, and with the English National Opera. It would seem that this practice could be even more useful inside Russia, but until now, for various reasons, theaters have not resorted to it, and the joint production of Novaya Opera with the Perm Opera and Ballet Theater was the first sign.

Secondly, The Flying Dutchman became another work in the opera genre directed by Konstantin Bogomolov. Since the Perm premiere has already taken place (see “Kommersant” dated April 6), there will be no surprise: everyone already knows that the director, in the usual smart manner, transferred the action of the opera to the Ural hinterland of the 1990s and made the Dutchman a maniac-killer who escaped from the colony. But in addition to Bogomolovsky humor, the performance is worth attention thanks to the conductor’s work of Philip Chizhevsky – he, like in Perm, will conduct Moscow performances of the opera.

In July 2024, the second opera premiere will take place – The Postman from Longjumeau, the most charming and terribly popular once comic rarity. The work by the author of Giselle Adolphe Adam (1836) is staged by the young French conductor Clement Nonsier, who won silver at last year’s Rachmaninov Competition, and directed by Yevgeny Pisarev (set by Zinovy ​​Margolin, costumes by Olga Shaishmelashvili). Moreover, it will be possible to listen to this opera – in a concert performance with Noncier at the console, but in Pisarev’s “director’s edition” – it will be possible this summer, a year before the premiere (July 13 and 15).

The dance company Ballet Moscow, which has joined the Novaya Opera since autumn last year, will contribute to the new season’s playbill with two premieres. The names of their authors – Olga Labovkina and Pavel Glukhov – were named by Anastasia Yatsenko, artistic director of Ballet Moscow, as soon as she headed the troupe: she knew both of them very well from Diana Vishneva’s Context festival, in which she curated the choreographers’ competition.

A native of Belarus, Olga Labovkina, who has completed international practice – artistic and staging, will stage a two-act play “Everything After” to the music of sound designer Ilya Dyagel with set design by Galia Solodovnikova and costumes by Olga Nikitina. The audience will have to balance on the verge of sleep and reality in the space of “not-home: a place suitable for life and at the same time alien.” On the big (literally) stage, the contemporary author Labovkina made her debut last fall: as part of the Labyrinth project at the Bolshoi Theater, she presented the one-act play The Creator of the Stars to the minimalist sound design of the same Ilya Dyagel. Something vaguely philosophical, spiced with surrealism, came out, and one can only hope that in his two-act performance “Everything After” the choreographer will nevertheless descend from heaven to earth.

The modern – and extremely popular – author Pavel Glukhov made his debut on the capital’s ballet stage this year. And successfully: at the Stanislavsky Museum, he composed The Last Session, a psychological thriller on pointe shoes. At the Novaya Opera, he will stage Stravinsky’s Les Noces in an unusual interpretation. Developing a genre of psychological dance that is rare for us, the choreographer Glukhov is going to tell several stories at once, exploring the conflicts of fathers and children, husbands and wives, collisions of pre-wedding fever – in a word, he is going to “try on” the ritual on living concrete people. This concept required a prologue and an epilogue, which composer Nikolai Popov undertook to write. Set designer Larisa Lomakina and costume designer Svetlana Tegin will support the unusual interpretation, Dmitry Volosnikov, musical director of the production, will stand at the podium. In other words, for the first time in a hundred years, this opera and ballet ritual, repeatedly interpreted by the luminaries of the 20th century, will turn into a plot performance.