Helikon-Opera tour to France
23.04.2008
Helikon-Opera tour to France
From the 6th till 20th of April "Helikon-Opera" was touring France. "Aida" by G. Verdi and "Vec Makropoulos" by L. Janacek were shown on stage of Opera de Massy. It was the 6th time when Helikon-Opera troupe performed in this theatre. Variously “Eugene Onegin”, “Falstaf”, “Carmen”, “Les Contes d’Hoffmann”, “Nabucco”, “The Tsar’s Bride” were presented to French public. Last year “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” and “Boris Godunov” performances went with a signal success.
Helikon-Opera’s arsenal has two productions of “Aida”. One is Russian, which is for many years is performed on stage of Helikon-Opera, another was staged for Verdi festival in Strasbourg (France) in summer 2001. Precisely this scale performance the leadership of the theatre decided to show to their spectators, buying in Strasbourg decorations and costumes.
The work under “Aida” was conjoint: the permanent production group – stage director Dmitry Bertman, set and costume designers Igor Nezhny and Tatiana Tulubieva, lighting designer Damir Ismagilov, stage directors’ assistant Natalia Dychenko, as well as the soloists and chorus artists of Helikon-Opera rehearsed with the French orchestra under Dominique Rouits from Opera de Massy. For the whole week from morning until late at night they reconstructed the performance. Many artists were the participants of Strasbourg production, but also there were those who went on big stage with scale decorations and first class machinery before 1500 seats hall for the first time.
Interesting fact that a lot of debuts were held in Paris performances – Karina Grigoryan and Elena Mikhailenko as Aida, Larisa Kostiuk as Amneris, Dmitry Ponomarev as Radames, Stanislav Shvets as Ramphis, Alexey Tikhomirov as the King of Egypt, Marina Karpechenko as High Priestess. The members of permanent cast also took part in the performance: Vadim Zaplechny as Radames, Ksenia Viaznikova as Amneris, Mikhail Seryshev as Messenger and dancer Oxana Kholeva.
Stanislav Shvets as Ramphis (in the centre) and two Radameses Vadim Zaplechny and Dmitry Ponomarev
Larisa Kostiuk as Amneris, Alexey Tikhomirov as the King of Egypt |  |
Scene from “Aida” performance | |
The production was interesting both for spectators, who welcomed artists with loud applause, and for the artists, who rehearsed with pleasure and invented new images for their characters. In the beginning of the second act (Hall in Amneris’ room) with surprise and delight the spectators saw the swimming pool in the centre of the stage, where half-naked “Egyptian” young people were splashing water with young “Egyptian” girl, and Amneris showed herself on stage with her favourite dog. Four “Aida” performances were sold out (1500 seats for each show were sold in autumn 2007) and warm reception followed.
After “Aida” Helikon people started with “Vec Makropoulos” by L. Janacek. Conductor of Helikon-Opera Denis Kirpanev helped his colleague to held rehearsals, considering the wishes of musical director of the performance Gennadiy Rozhdestvensky. Natalia Zagorinskaya, Svetlana Sozdateleva, Nikolay Dorozhkin, Sergey Yakovlev, Alexey Tikhomirov, Andrey Palamarchuk, Marina Kalinina, Ilya Ilin, Marina Karpechenko, Dmitry Ovchinnikov, Ekaterina Oblezova shined in the performances. Public warmly accepted Dmitry Bertman’s production. President of French Janacek’s Fund madame Obigny noted that it was the best production of the opera that she had ever seen in opera theatres of the world.
Memory photo after “Vec Makropoulos”: Igor Nezhny, Tatiana Tulubieva, Andrey Palamarchuk, Marina Kalinina, Natalia Zagorinskaya, Sergey Yakovlev and Nikolay Dorozhkin, Dmitry Ovchinnikov and Ilya Ilin |
…The tour ended. But we recall our interesting work, romantic walks along Paris, a visit to French Disneyland and a nice communication with colleagues and friends.