Before each performance in December young spectators will meet Father Frost and the Snow Maiden in the theatre's foyer, sing and dance around the Christmas Tree and have a lot of fun!
Stage Director Alla Sigalova and designer Pavel Kaplevich has suggested a bold idea to adapt the legendary ballet The Nutcracker to an opera.
The production was dedicated to the 175th anniversary of Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s birth, one of the most important dates in the 2015 music calendar.
Alla Sigallova, stage director:
I studied at the Vaganova Ballet College. In November the Mariinsky Theatre would start to show a series of The Nutcracker, where we participated, and the rehearsals would begin in September. If the performances commenced in November, we started rehearsals from September 1, when we had just returned after our summer holiday. And it would go nonstop till February. It was so during all nine years of my studies at the College. There was just a few-month break and The Nutcracker began again. Each note of its music is deep inside my pores. That is why to adapt The Nutcracker’s score to an opera was pretty obvious. This music means so much for me: it is my childhood, my native St. Petersburg, the smell of the theatre wings, the Mariinsky’s stage, and the expectation of New Year miracles. For me all of it is magical and enticing… To me this production is a gift from above. I am happy to work with Tchaikovsky’s music, with talented people, I am glad to be back at the Novaya Opera as I keep beautiful memories of Evgeny Kolobov and outstanding singers, chorus members, who created amazing images in La traviata 16 years ago. I am grateful to everyone who worked on The Nutcracker because it was a great responsibility. We gave birth to a new work, bringing into it our warmth, our cordiality, our experience and our childhood memories.
Igor Kadomtsev, author of the musical version:
Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker is the best ballet score in the world. It is a classic example of specifically ballet dramaturgy when the action takes part in Act 1, while Act 2 is basically a concert in costumes. The producers of the opera divided the action between the two acts, that is why their borders have changed and some numbers from original Act 2 have moved to Act 1. For example, in our version the Nutcracker meets the dolls in Act 1 and his fight with the mice turns out to be Masha’s dream. So we had to swap a few numbers and make decorative cuts. I dare say that many choreographers interpreted The Nutcracker’s drama in their own way.
The main task for me and the music director of the production, Dmitri Jurowski, was to reveal the operatic potential of the score. On the one hand we have preserved, where possible, Tchaikovsky’s original themes, on the other hand we have taken care about singers’ comfort. Our approach is integral: Tchaikovsky’s score is complemented with a vocal part, which is also based on the composer’s music (for example, taken from different levels of the musical fabric). We have kept the original orchestration, but in some parts we have made it lighter (otherwise it would not be possible to hear the singers). The only thing I allowed myself to compose is the aria of the Mouse King during the fight scene (but again it is based on Tchaikovsky’s themes).
