In the midst of the winter the Novaya Opera Theatre invites children and adults to the performance Old Granny’s Tales. The scenes of the performance and the contrasting vocal pieces from Mussorgsky’s cycles The Nursery and Pictures at an Exhibition will take you to the child’s world. The characters are lively children who will be sliding on Russian sledges and playing snowballs. And there is no winter without a skating rink. The stage director Alla Chepinoga has invented an original mock-up of an ice rink on which the actors will be skating. Each of Old Granny’s grandchildren has their own name and attitude, and each of the characters will be easily recognizable and interesting to young spectators.
Russian winter, a kaleidoscope of everyday life glimpses, such as a samovar tea-party, knitting, playing hobby horse, and mysterious stories are in store for the audience. Old Granny has plenty of tales to tell – about the evil bogeyman that roamed about the forest and took children to the woods, about the tsar and tsarina who lived over the sea in their splendid palace, and so many other stories.
The part of Old Granny will be sung by People’s Artist of Russia Emma Sarkisyan. In her earlier years she sang with the great tenors Ivan Kozlovsky and Sergei Lemeshev and was much admired by Sviatoslav Richter. The character of Grandma or Nanny is one of her very successful specialties. Since the first performance of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin in the Novaya Opera, the singer has sung the role of Nanny invariably in grand style. In 2006, when producing Eugene Onegin in the Bolshoi, stage director Dmitry Chernyakov invited Emma Sarkisyan to sing this role as eminently suitable for it. Her performance has always been highly acclaimed by the public and critics alike. As a professor at the Russian Academy of Theatre Arts, Emma Sarkisyan has trained a great number of world-famous soloists, Ekaterina Syurina being one example.
The young stage director Alla Chepinoga has already made three operatic productions at the Novaya Opera. Her directing debut in Voice of a Woman based on three mono operas was described in the media as very successful. Next she staged a production for children comprising Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf and The Ugly Duckling, which always draws a packed audience of children and their parents. The current 22nd season was opened with Alla Chepinoga’s premiere production of Richard Strauss’ Capriccio, for which she had won a grant from the Moscow Department of Culture.
The premiere of Old Granny’s Tales will be performed in the Mirror Foyer, now one more stage in the Novaya Opera. In December 2012, the theatre resumed the tradition established by Evgeny Kolobov in 1999 to play chamber concerts and performances in the Foyer.
Recommended for children of any age