The Foundation - News

July 2011

New production of „The Dead Souls“ at the Mariinsky Theatre

On March 18, 2011 the long-awaited premiere of the opera „Dead Souls“ finally took place in the new production of director Vasily Barchatov and set designer Zinovy Margolin on the stage of the St Petersburg Mariinsky Theatre and was conducted by Valery Gergiev. Since 2009 when the opera had a revival after a long break as a concert performance by Gergiev, there has been the desire to see this masterpiece of Russian opera from the second part of the 20th century as a real stage production. Its first stage production in the 70s, which was made by director Boris Pokrovsky and conductor Yuri Temirkanov, is regarded as legendary today and the opera is acknowlegded as „the pearl“ of Modern Russian opera theatre.

The story of the opera, which takes place in the beginning of the 19th century, has still kept its social brisance to the present. Its social brisances builds the heart of the dramatic concept of the new stage version, putting the story in an abstract period of time, as a mixture of past and present, in order to project the performance beyond time – according to the explanation of director Vasily Barchatov. „Even though aesthetics, our life and we are changing, Russia hardly changed“, said Shchedrin during an interview as he spoke about the book of Gogol. But Shchedrin believes like Valery Gergiev in a change and better future of Russia. From these perspective Gergiev expressed his hope that the opera would make a small contribution to this big target at least: „The opera waited very long but its time finally came. It is a very Russian story and Gogol did not only mean the time of the first part of the 19th century. If he could only imagine, that once his excellent and perceptive literary work will be the story of a great Russian opera, that would speak even to the people of the 21th century. Therefore we would like to dedicate this production to our country, Russia, which must make progress inspite of some resistances.“ (Valery Gergiev in an interview for Russian Radio „Orfei“ on March 20, 2011)

For additional information about the new production of the opera and the next performance on July, 19, please visit the website of the Mariinsky Theatre:
http://www.mariinsky.ru/en/playbill/playbill/2011/7/19/1_1900/
?year=2011&month=7