The Kyiv choreographer Viktor Lytvynov is staging the Caprices ballet performance to the music of Niccolo Paganini’s 24 Caprices, which were subtly orchestrated by the famous Ukrainian composer and conductor, the theater’s artistic director Myroslav Skoryk. This work has already conquered the audience in the symphony orchestra performance, and two years ago there was an idea to implement 24 Caprices on the capital’s stage. The theater’s direction originally proposed setting the performance to the former Kyivan, a famous choreographer Vadym Fedotov, who now has his own ballet school in Orlando (US), but due to different reasons this cooperation has not developed... The new libretto was jointly written by Viktor Lytvynov, Myroslav Skoryk, and Vitalii Malakhov, the chief director of the Theater On Podil. Mr. Skoryk is now working with the orchestra at the conductor’s stand. The performance design is being supervised by the National Opera chief artist Maria Levytska; she also developed the costumes together with Natalia Kucheria.
According to the plot, this will be a story about the creator – the Maestro. He has many names: once he was Mozart, Beethoven, and perhaps even Paganini. He is the personification of Divine gift, which occasionally falls upon the fate of a separate personality, selecting and pulling him out of the crowd, from all strata with no exceptions. And no matter how the God-chosen person would want to find a place among the ordinary people or response in someone’s heart, to find use for his talents and satisfy earthly passions, he will always be an outcast. Being chosen is for history, but not for life; this is forever, but not from birth to death.
The young chosen one is not aware of his mission and finds himself in the crowd among the usual whirlpool of life, where ordinary people neighbor with nobles and corrupted women – with the clergy. Once the hero will meet the Teacher, who puts a bow into the young man’s hands, which is to become both the usual musical instruments and the magical tool of fate, a symbol of power and the broken fragments (which will remain in the final of the passed earthly journey). And the main thing is the Music that accompanies the hero and rules him, leads him to people and separates from them. Maestro will meet two loves on his life’s path: Dream and Passion. Dream will remain a dream, and Passion will not belong to him alone. Maestro will gift his music to ordinary people and to aristocrats, in his own country and in distant lands, but nobody will understand it; they will not hear a usual tarantella in the careless rhythms or a ball in the exaggeratedly refined melodies. Enchanted by earthly manifestations of the divine, the hero will find no consolation in church, because through the stained-glass windows he will see servants who are no strangers to earthly vices. Maestro will be exhausted while searching for at least any response, but people will hear only what they want to hear. He is a clown for everyone... But finally the crowd, delighted by his melodies, will exalt the hero to the skies, but it will be very painful to fall from such height (and no one will even notice Maestro under their feet). But the music will sound the further the louder. Music will remain forever.
The ballet soloists are working on implementing the images of main characters: Kostyantyn Pozharnytsky, Oleksandr Shapoval, Jan Vanya (Maestro), Olena Filipieva, Olha Golytsia, Kateryna Kukhar (Dream), Anna Dorosh, Sinobu Takita (Passion).
