SONGS OF MILITARY YEARS. To the 75th anniversary of the start of World War II

June 22, on the Day of Remembrance and Sorrow, in St. Petersburg, a free gala concert of SONGS OF MILITARY YEARS will be held on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the start of World War II.

The most famous and favorite works of the war years will be performed by the soloists of the Mariinsky Theater, representing the domestic opera school at the best theater venues in the world, laureates of all-Russian and international competitions Irina Mataeva (soprano), Alexander Trofimov (tenor), Ekaterina Sergeeva (mezzo-soprano), Vadim Kravets (bass), Vladimir Celebrovsky (baritone).

The concert will take place on the stage of the St. Petersburg Musical Comedy Theater, memorable to many who survived the war and the blockade. All 900 blockade days without a break, the theater team worked for Leningrad and Leningrad residents. The curtain rose in the harshest winter of 1941-1942. - at that terrible time, the audience of the theater was a million three hundred thousand inhabitants of the city. In a frozen room, starving artists played two performances a day, and in between rehearsals, they served in the MPVO and the health team. Over the years of the blockade, more than 16 productions have been performed in the theater; more than a thousand concerts were given by the team of the Leningrad Musical Comedy on different sections of the front and in hospitals.

Veterans and participants of the Great Patriotic War, residents of besieged Leningrad — those who brought victory closer to the front and rear, will become honorary spectators of the concert on Memorial and Sorrow Day. It is possible that it was precisely one of them that the blockade performances of the Leningrad Musical Comedy helped to resist and not break spiritually.

Songs that will be performed in the Great Hall of the theater on June 22 are heard in the memory of generations. For many of us, they have become part of personal family stories - immortal and dear, disturbing to tears from the first chords of a familiar melody.

The program of the concert will be opened by the Holy War, written two days after the start of World War II. There was no time to print music and poems - A.V. Aleksandrov wrote notes and words on a blackboard, and the artists of the last group of the Red Banner Red Army Song and Dance Ensemble of the USSR wrote them down in their notebooks. The song was first performed on June 26, 1941 from a hastily put together platform in the waiting room at the Belorussky Train Station, drowned in noise and filled to capacity with people. But already from the second verse, the Holy War was listened standing and in utter silence. Then every morning she sounded on the radio, she was sung everywhere, she turned into a folk anthem, and today - into a folk memory. “Get up, the country is huge” has become part of a living story, just like “Dark Night”, “Random Waltz”, “Little Blue Modest Handkerchief”, “We Need One Victory”, “Nightingales”, “Sevastopol Waltz” and, of course, the most life-affirming and long-awaited “Victory Day”, the holiday lines of which we remember by heart.

On June 22, these and many other works will be performed with the participation of the Tauride Symphony Orchestra under the direction of artistic director and conductor Mikhail Golikov.

The project will take place on the initiative and with the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation.

The concert starts at 15.00.

Entrance to the auditorium - half an hour before the concert.