One-act opera “Mozart and Salieri” is set to premiere on 27th January, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s birthday, in Isidor Zak’s concert hall of the Novosibirsk state academic opera and ballet theatre. The second premiere performance is set on 28th January.
Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera after one of A. S. Pushkin’s “little tragedies” will be presented on a small stage of NOVAT as a multigenre project combining music, sound design, classic ballet and contemporary choreography. The performance will be featured with the voice of a famous theatre director Roman Viktyuk, who read Mozart’s letters exclusively for the Novosibirsk theatre.
“Mozart and Salieri” is Rimsky-Korsakov’s most concise opera. It was first staged 120 years ago precisely, on 25th September 1898 at Mamontov's Private Russian Opera in Moscow featuring the great Fyodor Shalyapin as Salieri and tenor Vasily Shkafer as Mozart. Based on Pushkin’s writing, the opera asks those age-old questions to the audience: is a genius capable of a murder? What is more important to the creation: genius insights or hard work?
According to the stage director Vyacheslav Starodubtsev, this new production is going to be interesting because of all those different theatre languages it’s trying to combine, while each of them is seeking to exceed its limits and find its way to the open space of the modern theatre.
17th January, prior to the premiere, a meeting of a new style ”Literary Wednesday” was held, where the audience had an opportunity to have a look on the other side of the opera performances from the theatre’s repertoire: Tchaikovsky’s “Queen of Spades. The Game” and the upcoming premiere “Mozart and Salieri” by Rimsky-Korsakov.
Watch a video report by OTS network.