Helikon Opera is a Russian opera company based in Moscow, specializing in unconventional productions. [1] [2] Their main performing base is the 250 seat Mayakovsky Theater, the former ballroom in the palace of the Shakhovskoi-Glebov-Streshneva family who were patrons of the arts in 19th century Moscow. The company was founded by Dmitry Bertman and gave its first performance, Stravinsky's Mavra , on April 10, 1990.
Helikon Opera gives 200 performances a year, primarily in Moscow but also abroad, performing in the UK for the first time in 1997. The company's repertoire includes both mainstream works and rarely performed operas and chamber operas. In the past they have staged Fleishman's Rothschild's Violin , Hindemith's Hin und zurück and Prokofiev's Maddalena and were the first company to revive Tchaikovsky's Undine (1994) and to stage Prokofiev's The Ugly Duckling (1992). [3] In October 2010, Helikon gave the first performance of Tchaikovsky's Mazeppa to be seen in Moscow in six years. [4]
Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor who later worked in the Soviet Union. As the creator of acknowledged masterpieces across numerous music genres, he is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century. His works include such widely heard pieces as the March from The Love for Three Oranges, the suite Lieutenant Kijé, the ballet Romeo and Juliet—from which "Dance of the Knights" is taken—and Peter and the Wolf. Of the established forms and genres in which he worked, he created—excluding juvenilia—seven completed operas, seven symphonies, eight ballets, five piano concertos, two violin concertos, a cello concerto, a symphony-concerto for cello and orchestra, and nine completed piano sonatas.
The Bolshoi Theatre is a historic theatre in Moscow, Russia, originally designed by architect Joseph Bové, which holds ballet and opera performances. Before the October Revolution it was a part of the Imperial Theatres of the Russian Empire along with Maly Theatre in Moscow and a few theatres in Saint Petersburg.
Valery Abisalovich Gergiev is a Russian conductor and opera company director. In 1988 he became general director and artistic director of the Mariinsky Theatre and artistic director of the White Nights Festival in St. Petersburg. He was chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic from September 2015 until he was dismissed on 1 March 2022.
The Mariinsky Theatre is a historic theatre of opera and ballet in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Opened in 1860, it became the preeminent music theatre of late 19th-century Russia, where many of the stage masterpieces of Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov received their premieres. Through most of the Soviet era, it was known as the Kirov Theatre. Today, the Mariinsky Theatre is home to the Mariinsky Ballet, Mariinsky Opera and Mariinsky Orchestra. Since Yuri Temirkanov's retirement in 1988, the conductor Valery Gergiev has served as the theatre's general director.
Romeo and Juliet, Op. 64, is a ballet by Sergei Prokofiev based on William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet. First composed in 1935, it was substantially revised for its Soviet premiere in early 1940. Prokofiev made from the ballet three orchestral suites and a suite for solo piano.
War and Peace is a 1946 230-minute opera in 13 scenes, plus an overture and an epigraph, by Sergei Prokofiev. Based on the 1869 novel War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, its Russian libretto was prepared by the composer and Mira Mendelson. The first seven scenes are devoted to peace, the latter six, after the epigraph, to war.
Vladimir Ivanovich Fedoseyev is a Soviet and Russian conductor, accordionist, teacher. People's Artist of the USSR (1980). Laureate of the USSR State Prize (1989) and the Glinka State Prize of the RSFSR (1970). Full Commander of the Order "For Merit to the Fatherland". Artistic director and chief conductor of the Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra since 1974.
Ekaterina Sergeyevna Maximova was a Soviet and Russian ballerina of the second part of the 20th century who was internationally recognised. She was a prima ballerina of the Bolshoi Theatre for 30 years, a ballet pedagogue, winner of international ballet competitions, Laureate of many prestigious International and Russian awards, a professor in GITIS, Honorary professor at the Moscow State University, Academician of the Russian Academy of Arts, and an Executive Committee member of the Russian Center of Counseil International De La Danse, UNESCO.
Alexander Prior is a British composer and conductor who studied at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. He was Chief Conductor of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra from 2017 to 2022.
Demon is an opera in three acts by Russian composer Anton Rubinstein. The work was composed in 1871. The libretto was by Pavel Viskovatov, based on the poem of the same name by Mikhail Lermontov.
Marius Stravinsky is a Kazakh-British conductor and violinist.
Simon Morrison is a scholar and writer specializing in 20th-century music, particularly Russian, Soviet, and French music, with special interests in dance, cinema, aesthetics, and historically informed performance based on primary sources.
Konstantin Saradzhev was an Armenian conductor and violinist. He was an advocate of new Russian music, and conducted a number of premieres of works by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Modest Mussorgsky, Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev, Nikolai Myaskovsky, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Aram Khachaturian. His son Konstantin Konstantinovich Saradzhev was a noted bell ringer and musical theorist.
Marina Domashenko is a Russian operatic mezzo-soprano.
The Perm Tchaikovsky Opera and Ballet Theatre is an opera and ballet theatre in the city of Perm in Russia. It is one of the oldest theatres in the country, and it has remained a major musical centre during its history, in which many significant art events have taken place. Its ballet troupe is one of the most popular in Russia.
Teodor Currentzis is a Greek conductor, musician and actor.
Kirill Tikhonov (1921–1998) was a Russian conductor and a recipient of the People's Artist of Russia award.
Valery Kritskov is a Russian conductor who used to take conducting lessons at the Moscow Institute of Culture which were taught by Kirill Tikhonov. He graduated from there in 1988 and then worked in Moscow-based Helikon Opera till he got employed with Novaya Opera in 2002. While there, he conducted many operas including Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's The Snow Maiden and The Tsar’s Bride as well as Anton Rubinstein's The Demon and Tchaikovsky's The Maid of Orleans. He also conducted works by the Italian composers such as Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana and Ruggero Leoncavallo's Pagliacci and German such as Richard Wagner's Lohengrin and Strauss' Die Fledermaus as well as a concert dedicated to Vincenzo Bellini. Besides operas, he is also known for his conducting of the Russian ballet based on works by Tchaikovsky and Sergei Prokofiev as well as German and Austrian ballet composers such as Ludwig Minkus and Charles Gounod. Later on, he became a conductor of the Coppélia ballet which was based by Léo Delibes work and was produced by Imperial Russian Ballet. Currently he has two CD recordings called Chorus of the Novaya Opera Theatre of Moscow and the Soloists of the Novaya Opera Theatre of Moscow.
Karina Flores, also known as Karina Grigoryan, is a Russian opera singer who has sung leading soprano roles with companies in her native Russia as well as in other European countries. For eight seasons she was a soloist with Helikon Opera in Moscow and has gone on to sing at the Teatro Regio in Turin, the Teatro Filarmonico in Verona, the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, and the Tyrolean State Theatre in Innsbruck, amongst others. She made her American debut in 2018 as the soprano soloist in a performance of the War Requiem at the Kennedy Center conducted by Gianandrea Noseda. On disc Flores appears as Lisa in Israeli Opera's 2012 recording of Pique Dame conducted by Vladimir Jurowski.
Elena Guseva is a Russian operatic soprano who has performed at major opera houses in Europe. Besides standard repertoire such as Verdi's Aida and Puccini's Mimi, she has focused on roles by Russian composers, such as Tchaikovsky's Lisa and Prokofiev's Polina, a role she performed when Der Spieler was first performed at the Vienna State Opera.
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