NUR-SULTAN – Astana Opera musicians and artists will present in September projects for children and perform Gioacchino Rossini’s one-act operatic farsa comica “La Scala di Seta” for adults.
“Music Draws and Tells,” a concert from the “A Visit to the Theatre” series, will be Sept. 15. Designed to instil aestheticism and a love of classical music in children, their vivid imaginations will allow them to easily see images expressed with sounds.
Musicologist Marzhan Zhakenova, the project’s creator and the evening’s host, will share with the young audience the intricacies of musical instruments and how composers select musical colours to paint their pieces.
Opera soloists, orchestra musicians and the Astana Opera Chamber Orchestra will perform the works of classical composers such as Brusilovsky’s “Elephant and Pug,” a fragment of Haydn’s Symphony No. 101 “The Clock,” Mussorgsky’s “The Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks” and Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee.” Ruslan Baimurzin will conduct with sand animation being projected on a screen.
National opera singers and artists will perform “La Scala di Seta” Sept. 19-20 as part of the PICCOLO Chamber Theatre creative project.
“The outstanding composer created this brilliant comedy opera based on the libretto of Giuseppe Maria Foppa at the age of 20 for the Venetian Teatro San Moisè. Rossini expresses his admiration for the enthusiasm and ingenuity of the young spouses Giulia and Dorvil, whose relationship for the time being should be kept secret. Every night, the young husband enters his wife’s room using a ladder made of silk, which she lowers down to him from her window. Unaware of the marriage, Giulia’s guardian Dormont wants to marry her off to Blansac. Misunderstandings and confusions constantly multiply to be happily resolved in the end,” notes the Astana Opera press release.
The opera artists will also show young audiences Tleugazy Beissembek’s musical tale “Samuryk Kelgen Tan” (“The Sacred Bird Samuryk”) on Sept. 22. A child choir will help reveal the tale of Aidar and Aizhan’s adventures in search of the Kazakh magical bird. The brave heroes and their faithful friends will explore the Mangilik Yel wonderland in this magical tale. Tleugazy Beissembek, the composer and member of the Writers’ Union of Kazakhstan, wrote both the music and libretto and the production won the Best Dramatic Work for Children award at the seventh Тauyelsizdik Tolgauy national competition.
Astana Opera Children’s Studio artists, including those from the choir and ballet studios, will give solo and group performances at the Sept. 29 concert “Children Invite to the Opera House.”
The children’s studio opened in 2013, the same year the opera house began operation. Children’s studio members explore acting and music. They participate alongside adult performers in concert programmes, opera and ballet performances such as Bizet’s “Carmen;” Brusilovsky’s “Kyz Zhibek;” Roland Petit’s “Notre Dame de Paris;” Puccini’s “La Bohème,” “Tosca” and “Turandot;” Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin” and Tulebayev’s “Birzhan-Sara.” The studio’s youngest pupils are only seven years old and the first graduates are already university students in Kazakhstan and abroad.
