LVIV — October will mark the peak of festivities for Lviv Opera. It opened on October 4, 1900, with the premiere of Wladyslaw Zelenski’s Janek, an opera about Transcarpathian highlanders in which the leading part was played by the outstanding Ukrainian tenor Oleksandr Myshuha, Lviv National Opera’s director general Tadei Eder told The Day.
The company is preparing two premieres for its 110th anniversary, Lviv-based composer Myroslav Volynsky’s opera Danylo Halytsky and the living classic Myroslav Skoryk’s ballet Pro zhyttia i tvorchist Pahanini (Paganini’s Life and Creativity) Each production will cost at least 700,000 hryvnias. The company’s administration plans to request, from the President of Ukraine – via a session of the Regional Council, that a separate expense item be added to the central budget, in order to finance the jubilee. “Over the past seventeen years we haven’t received a single kopiika from the state. I’m ashamed to admit that we haven’t paid the honorariums of the ninety-six performers from fourteen countries who took part in the prestigious Solomia Krushelnytska International Opera Singers Competition held half a year ago, as well as the jury,” Tadei Eder sounds desperate. “Money is also needed for new instruments for the orchestra, for renovating the rehearsal and ballet halls, for a modern fire alarm and electronic ticket-selling system, so that people can buy them anywhere in the world. The director general is proud of the autonomous heating system for the orchestra pit and the renovation of the air purification and heating system in the audience areas (it broke down several decades ago).
Lviv Opera’s 110th anniversary is planned as a series of performances with both new guest stars and the company’s regular partners from Warsaw, Lviv, Minsk, La Scala, Opera de Paris, Metropolitan Opera, Mariinsky Theater, Bolshoi Theater, Berlin, Budapest, Prague, and Donetsk.
La Scala Theater Museum will make a very nice present to the Lviv Opera – twenty costumes will be sent from Milan. They were once used by the inimitable Maria Callas, Luciano Pavarotti, Enrico Caruso, and Matia Battistini. Lviv’s National Museum will host an exhibit by the Ukrainian production designer Yevhen Lysyk who dedicated 30 years to the company.
Lviv Opera will shortly start off on a concert tour of France. This first tour in March will cover seven cities and the program includes the German composer Carl Orff’s scenic cantata Carmina Burana – with ballet scenes. Hryhorii Panteleichuk, the guest conductor from France, told The Day that the Lviv troupe will perform in the so-called Zenith audiences seating between five and fifteen thousand, and that 95 percent of the tickets have been sold because “the Lviv company is interesting to Europeans primarily by the quality of its renditions; your performers are never potboilers.” The second tour of France is scheduled for November.
