Nomination for the Golden Mask and new director at the Krasnoyarsk Opera

KRASNOYARSK. Dismissal and new appointments in the theater of opera and ballet.

The appointment of a new chief director at the Krasnoyarsk Opera and Ballet Theater was preceded by an unexpected for many non-renewal of the contract with the former. There are enough versions of the dismissal of Nadezhda Stolbova, who held this post for three years, and with it the conductor Volosnikov. The criterion for the effectiveness of any leader, whether it is a creative team or a weaving factory, is the success of the team he leads, its development and progress.

The extraordinary directorial style of Stolbova appealed to the audience, critics, and other categories of the public indifferent to high art. The recent premiere of La Traviata was a huge success, bringing the theater a nomination for the Golden Mask. Other works by the tandem of Stolbova and Volosnikov turned out to be impressive: a synthesis of literary words and music in the evenings in memory of the writer Viktor Astafyev, concerts dedicated to the anniversary of the Victory, with the participation of Sergei Garmash and Veniamin Smekhov. The paradoxical is the Krasnoyarsk metamorphosis, whatever their true causes.

In this controversial situation, Neeme Kuningas, just appointed chief director of the theater, began work. Kuningas’s creative piggy bank has dozens of productions in major theaters in the world, 20 years of experience working at the Estonian National Opera. One of the most successful and striking productions of the last decade was the joint work of the Estonian director and Dmitry Bertman, head of the Moscow Helikon Opera, on the opera Wallenberg. The protagonist of the opera by composer Erkki-Sven Tüür is a Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Jews during the war.

The plans for the next six months include the production of Caesar Cui’s opera The Prisoner of the Caucasus, popular in the 19th century and now almost unknown to the public, in which Leonid Sobinov once shone. “Pen breakdown” in the new theater was for Kuningas a program dedicated to George Sviridov. Larisa Mirzoyeva has been appointed artistic director of the opera company.

Elena Tanakova © Gallerix.ru