NUR-SULTAN – The Astana Opera House hosted 185 events in its seventh theater season, according to the theater’s press service report for early July. It includes three premieres – Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “Don Carlos,” Léo Delibes’ ballet “Coppélia” and “Beethoven – Immortal – Love” a ballet set to the music of Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Haubrich.
Astana Opera soloists performed in the the Zhuravli (Crane birds) an international online project launched on Victory Day on May 9.
A number of scheduled major premieres were not able to be staged due to the pandemic outbreak. Gaetano Donizetti’s operas “Don Pasquale,” “L’Elisir d’Amore,” and “The Call of the Steppe” ballet set to Tles Kazhgaliyev’s music have been postponed and will be presented in the new season. The theater plans to start the new season no later than the end of September if the epidemiological situation improves in the country.
In the meantime, the theater migrated to the internet to support its audience during the lockdown from March onwards. All together, 41 performances were also broadcast on TENGRI TV.
“The soloists participated in the Quarantine Star project, organized by the Ministry of Culture and Sports. The opera house also offered viewers 15 online performances. These included the Zhuravli (Crane birds) an international online project launched on Victory Day, two episodes of the“Everything You Need to Know about Ballet” program featuring Serik Nakyspekov, who spoke about ballet terms and the special characteristics of modern dance. And on May 7th, Kazakh musicians took part in the Tchaikovsky’s concert to mark the composer’s 180th anniversary,” according to the official release.
Astana Opera’s leading soloists and opera stars from Italy, Mexico, Japan, China, Romania, Georgia and the Astana Opera Symphony Orchestra performed the Neapolitan song “O Sole Mio.” The theater’s principal soloist Maira Mukhamedkyzy performed Vangelis’ “The Pray of the World” dedicated to all the doctors around the world.
Touring activities were also amed as one of the theater’s major achievements. The Astana Opera company presented Rossini’s operatic farsa comica “La Scala di Seta” as part of the Fourth International Chamber Opera Festival at the St. Petersburg Chamber Opera in Saint Petersburg on October 20th. In the same month, the Kazakh soloists presented Tchaikovsky’s opera masterpiece “Eugene Onegin” at the Hvorostovsky Krasnoyarsk State Opera and Ballet Theatre and took part in the first Dmitri Hvorostovsky Festival.
All the tours were held as part of the Modernization of Kazakhstan’s Identity state program.
The Astana Opera hosted the tours of three Russian theatre companies. The St. Petersburg Chamber Opera presented Verdi’s “Rigoletto” and Bizet’s “Les Pêcheurs de Perles” in November. As part of the Hvorostovsky Krasnoyarsk State Opera and Ballet Theatre tour, Borodin’s opera “Prince Igor” was also produced in the same month. Glazunov’s ballet “Raymonda” staged by the outstanding choreographer Yuri Grigorovich was presented in December.
In 2020, the Vakhtangov State Academic Theater presented scenes from Alexander Pushkin’s novel in verse “Eugene Onegin” and Anton Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya” in January for the first time in the Kazakh capital.
