Conductor, show your face!
In opera, all you ever get to see of a conductor is the back of his head. It is time for a shift of perspective.
A concert in a repertoire opera house is an exceptional event (almost like the opening of state borders). Especially so, when it is an anniversary concert. On 24 April 2021, the Evgeny Kolobov Novaya Opera Theatre of Moscow will celebrate its 30th anniversary with a gala concert called ‘Faces of Music’.
Thirty years does not sound like a long time for an opera house. One of the youngest opera theatres in Russia, the Novaya Opera emerged at the time when arts were not among the things to worry about, as the old system collapsed and a new Russia was created. However, Maestro Evgeny Kolobov thought otherwise: in 1991, the musician founded his theatre. Three decades later, the Novaya opera is celebrating not only its anniversary, but also the 75th anniversary of the birth of its founder, Evgeny Kolobov, recognised as one of the best Russian conductors.
‘I am convinced that in the opera house Music is the main lawmaker,’ said Kolobov. This is what the Novaya Opera is like – a theatre where music is primary, and the conductor is its medium and personification. The gala concert ‘Faces of Music’ presents the Novaya Opera as a conductor’s theatre. On the forestage are maestros who worked, studied or were friends with Kolobov and as well as musicians of the new generation - conductors who are writing today’s history of the theatre.
Alexandru Samoilă, a fellow student of Evgeny Kolobov in the Urals Conservatory, has been the Novaya Opera’s chief conductor since 2019. Alexandru Samoilă conducts all the productions of Verdi’s operas in the theatre. For the gala concert, he has also chosen Verdi’s music – the finale of Act 2 of Aida, and a classical opera piece, the finale of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. The final number will be a salute to the founder of the Novaya Opera: the poignant nocturne La Séparation by Glinka, orchestrated by Evgeny Kolobov.
A block of Russian music will be presented by four conductors.
Evgeny Samoilov and Dmitry Volosnikov are representatives of the Kolobov theatre. Evgeny Samoilov has worked in the Novaya Opera since 1993. Under his baton, the orchestra will play Tchaikovsky’s Slavonic March and extracts from the opera Mazeppa. Dmitry Volosnikov was Evgeny Kolobov’s student in the Urals Conservatory; since 1998, he has been a conductor at the Novaya Opera; he was the artistic director of the Preobrazhenie Festival in Yaroslavl, which for many years bore the name of Evgeny Kolobov. Once at the festival, Dmitry Volosnikov conducted Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya, and an excerpt from the opera will be performed at the gala concert.
Andrey Lebedev and Vasily Valitov represent the new history of the Novaya Opera; their creative career in the theatre began in the 2010s. They are some of the most successful conductors in Russia; their repertoire is extensive. For the theatre’s anniversary the maestros have chosen excerpts from Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina (Andrey Lebedev) and the famous Polovtsian Dances from Borodin’s opera Prince Igor (Vasily Valitov). Vasily Valitov conducted the landmark production of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde: the Moscow premiere of the opera took place on Novaya’s stage. At the gala concert he will conduct the Prelude and Liebestod in an orchestral version.
Valentin Uryupin is one of the most sought after Russian conductors of the young generation, an outstanding clarinettist, the artistic director and chief conductor of the Rostov Academic Symphony Orchestra, and a friend of the Novaya Opera. The maestro offers a a French repertoire: an excerpt from Massenet’s Cendrillon, and Dutilleux’s vocal cycle Correspondances – performed for the first time in full in Russia.
The six conductors are as many faces of music surrounding that of Evgeny Kolobov, the only conductor in the world to have his own theatre built for him.
