The “Baroque Festival” at the Opera and Ballet Theater will end with the premiere of the opera Dido and Aeneas

The first May festival of Baroque music will be held in Astrakhan from 20 May to 26 May. This new theatrical project is to show different facets of musical art and establish the traditions of baroque performing at the Astrakhan Opera and Ballet Theater. Four different theater venues will present the audience with the variety of Baroque musical styles. Sacred choral music will sound in the theater foyer, secular instrumental and music will be played in the stalls, the concert program “French Things” will be performed in the Small Hall of the theater and the audience will hear the opera music played at the stage of the Great Hall.

The artistic council discussed the main zest of the festival - the premiere of the opera Dido and Aeneas. The Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the theater Valery Voronin said that to stage the opera on the Big Stage, a new chamber theater stage would be built, which in the future would host chamber concerts or experimental productions that might require closer contact with the performers. “Our theater works in different directions, and I am sure that baroque music in our repertoire will find its admirers. The opera Dido and Aeneas has been long and successfully staged in various theaters; we will offer a new unique interpretation of the mythological plot,” the maestro noted.

The Chief Director of the theater and the director of the opera Alexey Smirnov was more detailed when speaking about the plot of the performance and his great desire to work in the new format. “This is a performance about love, break up, family relationships and the choices that every person makes at one time or another,” he noted. The director admitted that the costume designers had been inspired by the clothing style of the European aristocracy, and he even named the performer of the role of Dido. It will be the soloist of the Nizhny Novgorod Academic Opera and Ballet Theater, the laureate of international competitions, the laureate of the National Opera Prize “Onegin”, the participant of the V international television project “Bolshoi Opera” Yana Dyakova.

The video content of the performance will be interesting as well. The unusual lighting design of the stage, together with projections of the sea, rain, sunlight, and the desert will help to create a special mood and reflect the characters’ change of feelings and emotions, and the tragic denouement of the performance.

Аt the artistic council, the Lighting Designer Sergei Skornetsky presented the scenic solution for the production. The graduate of the School-studio of MKHAT, the winner of the national theater award “Golden Mask”, he has designed more than 60 performances, including two in the Astrakhan theater: The Elixir of Love and The Love for Three Oranges. “A special portal, an interior wall will create a metaphorical.