Chaliapin Opera Festival’s 32nd edition to open with The Barber of Seville premiere

 “I am happy I have met this theatre,” said performance’s stage director Yuriy Alexandrov.

(Kazan, 30 January, Tatar-inform, Yekaterina Vislavskaya). The premiere show that will traditionally open this year’s Chaliapin Festival will be The Barber of Seville by G. Rossini, staged by a director from Saint-Petersburg, Yuriy Alexandrov. Musa Jalil Opera and Ballet Theatre director Raufal Mukhametzyanov, director Yuiry Alexandrov, and theatre's museum director Ramzia Taktash told journalists about the festival’s programme.

The festival’s 32nd edition will take place on the stage of Tatar Opera and Ballet Theatre between 2 and 18 February. This year, the music forum marks the 140th anniversary of Kazan opera.

Speaking at the news conference, Raufal Mukhametzyanov said that the playbill included time-tested performances, which was a theatre’s policy. The list includes classical shows that only needed a strong cast, which, as in the previous years, is stellar: Albina Shagimuratova, Vladimir Matorin, Mikhail Kazakov, Alexey Tikhomirov, Veronica Jioyeva, Boris Stacenko, Anna Samuel, Terry Cook, Melba Ramos, and others.

A premiere show opening the festival is a tradition. This year, G. Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, produced by Yuriy Alexandrov from Saint-Petersburg, will be the gift to the audience. The director is familiar to the local audience, since last year’s festival opened with his new production of Aida.

“I am happy that I have encountered this theatre,” director said at a news conference at theatre’s premises. “At Aida, I was stunned by the bar being set so high and nobody asking me to make ‘a suitcase show’, easy to move. Large forms, well thought out and classical, awaited me – and this is how Aida emerged. Because of this, I treasure my friendship with this theatre and I prepared very thoroughly for staging The Barber of Seville.”

Theatre’s museum director Ramzia Taktash told about the event the festival was dedicated to, 140th anniversary of Kazan opera. Regular opera seasons had begun in Kazan in 1874, she explained. A display shows the history of the then premiere opera Life for the Tsar by Glinka.

Tickets to the festival have been sold out. They were more often than not sold out long before the shows, which was a common practice in the world, Raufal Mukhametzyanov said.