04.02.2012

Raufal Mukhametzyanov: Shaliapin Festival has changed the "face of the theatre"

Raufal Mukhametzyanov, Director of the Tatar State Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet named after Musa Jalil:
Kazan is a city with well-established opera traditions. Love for opera of Kazan citizens started in the second half of the XIX century, when townspeople were shown first performances of a permanent P. M. Medvedev`s opera company.

There is also another reference point of the history of the Kazan Opera – 1939 year, the time of graduation of students of the Tatar opera school under the Moscow conservatory and the opening of the Tatar Opera theatre.

However, more than thirty years ago, when I started to work in the theatre, there wasn`t time for the history.  At that time, the Tatar State Opera and Ballet theatre experienced hard times. The theatre was unattended:  auditorium during ballet performances was filled with only thirty percent, at the opera - audience was even smaller. There were such situations when at the performances attended more actors than audience did! It was obvious that something must be changed. The old system of functioning wasn`t working. It required a new model that would dramatically improve the quality of the performances and make the audience back to the theatre.

The idea of the opera festival named after Fyodor Shaliapin was dictated by the necessity of attracting the attention of audience. The concept of the festival is simple and efficient. The basis of the festival is a playbill that contains own productions of the theatre, but all the leading parts are performed by guest soloists - the leading opera singers of Russia and the artists of other countries. This model works for the festival to this day, allowing, thanks to the new names, keep our audience interested.

The choice of the name of the festival was nonrandom. Kazan is a birthplace of the great singer Fyodor Shaliapin. Here he was born and made his first steps in art. Shaliapin is the most famous name in the world amongst all Russian opera singers. The scale of his talent and the glory of Russian bass overstepped his time and became the property of Eternity. Kazan is the owner of a unique brand, which can not be claimed by any other city in the world. Thanks to the festival and constant interest in the personality of the great Russian bass, in 1999 in Kazan was opened the world's first monument to Shaliapin. And the festival itself became distinctive monument to the great singer.

Designed as a regional festival, later it acquired national and international statuses. Forum survived the collapse of the Soviet Union, economic and political crises that have shaken our country. Fortunately, with all the changes of the political system in Russia, the republic's leadership in the face of our first President Mintimer Shaimiev and the current President Rustam Minnikhanov Nurgalievich always supported the festival, not allowing him to become ordinary, a formal event.
The festival has changed the whole theatre. We abandoned the old staffing. The theatre retained the basic groups - choir, orchestra, chorus, but abolished an institute of senior specialists and leading soloists. This allowed to consider each new performance as a separate project, to which directors are invited from all over the world. For many years before any new production we are casting the best singers to form unique ensemble of performers. Time has passed. Today we no longer distinguish the festival productions and performances of current repertoire. All of them should be of the highest class!

As a result of the reforms we got constant interest in the theatre today.  Almost all the productions are sold out for every performance, and tickets for Shaliapin Festival are also selling out in a half or two months before its opening.  There are no such cases, except may be, in Bolshoi.
The formation of the repertoire remains the same. In the theatre playbill presented masterpieces of Russian and Western classics, as well as the best examples of the national repertoire. In the playbill organically coexists productions in the style of "grand opera"( for example, the transfer performance of the Bolshoi Theatre's "Boris Godunov" - a famous staging by L.Baratov ) and the author's plays. Among them - Jeannette Aster`s  "La Traviata"  , "Carmen" by George Kovtun, "Rigoletto," "Madame Butterfly", "Lucia di Lammermoor" by Mikhail Pandzhavidze etc. Operas by the tatar composers like "The Love of the Poet" (Rezeda Akhiyarova), "Jalil" (Nazib Zhiganov) are also very successful.

Cooperating with several major European companies, such as «EuroStage», «Impressariaat Ruud de Graaf» (the Netherlands) and «Konzertdirektion Schlote» (Austria) helped to consolidate success achieved by the new model. Finally the theatre has been integrated into the world cultural and theatrical context. For nearly 20 years, the theatre provides an annual 2-3 large foreign tour. Of the non-capital theatres we are the only ones who are able to carry out touring on such huge scale.

Experience of co-production with European theatrical agencies has allowed to define the tasks that now confront the modern opera house. As a result, we deliberately chose a synthetic model of the art: on the one hand, we are not afraid to be a "museum" and put the classic performances, on the other – to make modern, avant-garde opera productions. In accordance with modern requirements all our performances are in the original languages.
This year the Shaliapin festival is held for the thirtieth time. When we held the first festival, none of us (we will not dissemble) was thinking that it will continue to exist and to have such significance after a few decades. Today the festival named after Shaliapin - is the cultural brand of Kazan. Now we face another challenge: to maintain the brand.

 Shaliapin Festival - this is a momentous event in the world of musical life as the festivals in Salzburg, Bayreuth and Bregenz. Our goal - to make the forum in Kazan as famous and prestigious in order to star-class, world-renowned soloists, and not just individual performers, but entire teams could come to Kazan! For soloists from Russia and abroad could feel:  to perform here at the festival in Kazan - an honor for them.