Bolshoi Theatre Offers Baroque Opera In 2015-16 Season

Rebecca Evans as Rodelinda in the Richard Jones production this season at ENO (Photo: Clive Barda)

"The Bolshoi Theater's 2015-2016 season, which was announced at a press conference Wednesday, will include a number of new stagings and modern productions in both opera and ballet. In the first half of the season, the Bolshoi will debut a children's opera, “The Fables of The Vixen, The Duckling, and Balda.” The production will combine three operas about fairy tales — Sergei Prokofiev's The Ugly Duckling, Igor Stravinsky's Renard, and Alexander Pravednikov's The Tale of the Priest and his Workman Balda. The opera will be conducted by Dmitry Belyanushkin, who also directed last year's children's opera The Legend of Kai and Gerda. Musical director Tugan Sokhiev told attendees at the conference that the opera will include 'interactive elements.' Also in October, the Bolshoi will premiere a program that includes both the Nutcracker Suite and the opera Iolanta, a realization of Tchaikovsky's initial plans for the two productions to be performed on a single bill. In December, the Bolshoi New Stage will feature a production of Handel's Rodelina in collaboration with the English National Opera, a rare staging of a baroque opera at the theater. In the spring, the theater will offer a new production of Donizetti's opera-buffa Don Pasquale, under the direction of Timofei Kulyabin, who was fired for his modern staging of Wagner's Tannahauser at the Novosibirsk Opera and