The theme of the 2016 Epiphany Festival, Dialogues and Doubles, inspired Novaya Opera soloists to prepare chamber concerts dedicated to the idea of creative dialogues.

In opera, a composer usually collaborates with his contemporary librettist, while in chamber vocal music this happens very seldom. Usually a composer chooses verses to their which have already been written, no matter if the author is a contemporary writer or a poet of the past times, a compatriot or a foreigner. That is how creative “dialogues” between authors separated by thousands of kilometers and (or) decades (and sometimes by centuries) are formed. The abundance of romance “doubles” is explained by the popularity of certain poems. An Evening of Romances/in the Mirror Foyer is dedicated to such “doubles”.

The programme of the concert comprises chamber vocal miniatures written to the same plot or to the same verses. Romance doubles include Schubert’s /Gretchen am Spinnrade and Glinka’s Margarita’s Song, Rimsky-Korsakov’s and Rachmaninoff’s Don’t Sing, My Beauty…, Rimsky-Korsakov’s and Dargomyzhsky’s I’m Sad, Tchaikovsky’s and Napravnik’s Don Juan’s Serenade, Rachmaninoff’s Spring Waters and Shostakovich’s The Awakening of Spring (from the Satires cycle) and many other pieces, including little-known compositions.