We learned about coming performances of Ukrainian classic operas and ballets at two international Baltic art forums, to come to the region for the first time since the nation’s independence, at a news conference on the signing of the agreement providing for the Shevchenko National Opera of Ukraine’s participation in the Johvi Ballet Festival in May 2014 and the Saaremaa Opera Days International Festival in July next year.
The Kyivan company’s massive performance will be the first step in a series of artistic events planned under the five-year program of cultural cooperation, signed by Ukraine and Estonia last year. The general director of the National Opera of Ukraine Petro Chupryna and the director of the Eesti Kontsert concert agency Juri Leiten signed the document in front of the media and the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Estonia to Ukraine Sulev Kannike.
Besides Skorulsky’s Forest Song, the ballet company will perform Glazunov’s romantic ballet Raymonda and take part in a gala concert featuring stars of Ukrainian and Estonian ballet and offering the audience classical choreography fragments and contemporary dance numbers as well as Carmen Suite by Bizet and Shchedrin, an example of the Modernist ballet. Our country will be represented by a veritable constellation of artists, including prominent Ukrainian dancers Olena Filipieva, Natalia Matsak, Denys Nedak, Serhii Sydorsky, Tetiana Liozova, Yan Vania, Kateryna Kukhar, and Oleksandr Stoianov.
In its capacity as the organizer of the Saaremaa Opera Days, the Eesti Kontsert has been expanding geographical diversity of its participants every year, with the list already including the Estonia National Opera, the Vanemuine Theater (Estonia), Ankara State Opera (Turkey), the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theater and the Helikon Opera from Moscow (Russia), Black American Opera, Latvian National Opera, the opera houses of Georgia, etc.
Our soloists will perform the festival’s opening parties, soprano and mezzo-soprano in Mozart’s Requiem on July 22, 2014, accompanied by the Estonian Chamber Orchestra and Choir. From July 23 to 26, the National Opera’s company will promote Ukraine by staging two more performances in addition to Lysenko’s Natalka Poltavka, that is, Verdi’s Don Carlos and Bellini’s Norma. Another event will be the gala concert featuring Ukrainian performers as well as singers from Finland, Sweden, and Estonia, and conducted by Ukrainian and Estonian conductors. The theater’s artistic leadership has promised that the Opera Days’ audience will get to see its leading soloists, including Anzhelina Shvachka, Viktoria Chenska, Lilia Hrevtsova, Tetiana Piminova, Natalia Nykolaishyn, Serhii Mahera, Serhii Pashchuk, Andrii Romanenko, Hennadii Vashchenko, Bohdan Taras, Dmytro Kuzmin, Yurii Avramchuk, and Oleksandr Miliev.
