Artistic tandem of stage director Vyacheslav Starodubtsev and designer Zhanna Usachyova continue their work on Un Ballo in Maschera thriller opera by Giuseppe Verdi, which will premiere in February. This Verdi's work has a hard artistic fate - travails with censorship and political overtones have determined the stage director's approach to artistic solution of the production: a generalized character of a monarch enlightener is highlighted with vivid colours against the background of grey and black puritan costumes of his entourage. This approach allows to depict both existing editions of libretto: the original one , based on a story of assassination of the king of Sweden Gustav III during a masquerade ball at the Swedish royal opera, and another one that has been censored for political reasons, where the action was transferred to colonial America, puritan Boston. Such artistic solution turns the plot into a universal one, timeless, for treachery only changes its masks.
