Opera Chic

St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Theatre Sequel Bows

(credit)

St. Petersburg's midway through the weekend inauguration of its brand new, 700$ million opera house, funded by the Russian government, christened with a name like a luxury cruise ship or a Hollywood blockbuster sequel -- 2 Fast 2 Furious, Mariinsky II, Electric Boogaloo.

In 2011, OC straddled the spongy shores of the Baltic Sea and the broad River Neva in Paul Smith kitten heels for Gergiev's 19th Stars of the White Nights Festival during the disorienting, perpetual twilight of the midnight sun. St. Petersburg, with its vast embankments and canals that rival the waterways of Venice and Amsterdam (that's what our affable driver told us, anyway) has nurtured classical music's greatest artists and performers -- Balanchine, Rachmaninoff, Chaliapin, Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky -- and its original white and turquoise theater (Mariinsky I?) raised Nureyev, Baryshnikov and Ulanova. And when you tire of Mariinsky II's cruise-ship hall, St. Petersburg's got fifty additional musical theaters better equipped at handling intimate rep.

At the helm of this weekend's festivities is Mariinsky's artistic director/general manager of 25 years, Valery Gergiev, on the theatre's timecard since 1998 (as principal conductor) to relive former intendant, our beloved Yuri Temirkanov. With a spin of his influential rolodex, Gergiev fortified the VIP velvet ropers with bff President Vladimir Putin, Anna Netrebko (looking fine in a dress that screamed Eastern bloc dramz and hair that screamed Sunday spin with dad in the Porsche 911 convertible), Rene Pape and Plácido Domingo.

Thursday's gala concert officialy opened the theater with ballet, symphony and opera teasers and included Trebs ambling into Verdi thorns with Vieni, t'affretta.

Thanks to Arte, you can watch the two-and-a-half-hour gala here:

Moscow-born maestro Gergiev has sweated buckets over the past decade (or two) trying to put St. Petersburg and the Mariinsky Theatre on the opera map with vastly-expanded repertoire and an ambitious summer festival to compete with Europe's established destinations -- Salzburg, Bayreuth, Bregenz, Lucerne, Zurich, Aix-en-Provence, etc. Will his Mariinsky II crown jewel complete the trifecta, adding the new, state-of-the-art house to longstanding international rep + an enticing summer festival?

Ummm...why you peepin us for the answer? (DMX voice) Better to close your eyes, point and thank the Magic 8 Ball:

    ● It is certain
    ● It is decidedly so
    ● Without a doubt
    ● Yes definitely
    ● You may rely on it
    ● As I see it yes
    ● Most likely
    ● Outlook good
    ● Yes
    ● Signs point to yes
    ● Reply hazy try again
    ● Ask again later
    ● Better not tell you now
    ● Cannot predict now
    ● Concentrate and ask again
    ● Don't count on it
    ● My reply is no
    ● My sources say no
    ● Outlook not so good
    ● Very doubtful

Opera Chic and Grazia Magazine: White Nights in St. Petersburg

Read, in Italian, about OC's adventures in St. Petersburg last week with Valery Gergiev and Montblanc. Go on. You know you want to...

Champagne Wishes & Caviar Dreams: Montblanc and Gergiev's White Nights Festival

 

OC just returned to Milan from a whirlwind, Northern Lights-trippingly fabulous adventure in St. Petersburg and you didn't -- unless you did -- then we must have toasted beguilingly over glasses of champagne and checked out an ethereal Verdi's Requiem starring Valery Gergiev and this year's young Russian winners of the Montblanc New Voices at the Stars of the White Nights 2011 concert with booming bass Mikhail Petrenko and lyric tenor Sergei Semishkur.

Montblanc's new Haute Joaillerie collection, launched to celebrate the event, competed with the radiance of the Northern Lights that bathe the city during June with an almost 24-hour glow (the photo above OC took on a boat ride around 1am), but a steady flow of dark Russian teas kept us in top form and we'll report back to you with the events. It's well worth the wait as we continue to cocktail-hop our way through Men's Fashion Week, which has just touched-down in Milan and continues for the next couple days. So a 24-hour party welcomes us back from a 24-hour party, and really, what could be better to cure our champagne and caviar hangovers than flourishing cocktails with an international swell of hot, young male models?

Timeo Danaos, Etc: Les Troyens in Warsaw, With Stormtroopers

Images from a dress rehearsal of the "Les Troyens" conducted by Valery Gergiev and directed by Carlus Padrissa at the Polish National Opera in Warsaw (Reuters/Kacper Pempel)

Three's Company: Matheuz-Gergiev Double Bill @ Scala While Dudamel is in the Audience

Earlier today in Milan, at 10:15AM, Diego Matheuz held his first open rehearsal at Scala replacing Valery Gergiev who had apparently canceled  (but later showed up in the audience, straight from the airport -- private flight because that's how star conductors roll, bY0tches! -- to support the young Venezuelan conductor and to conduct personally the second half of the rehearsal around 11:30AM).

Also present in the audience, Gustavo Dudamel, who's in town to conduct "Carmen" at Scala.

Matheuz is in town to rehearse the November 11 concert with Filarmonica at Konzerthaus in Berlin, his proper debut with the Scala symphony orchestra.

In an interview with Repubblica newspaper, Matheuz -- another product of El Sistema -- said something pretty funny: as a kid (he's 26 now) he used to be a cellist but the instrument was too bulky to fit in his dad's car: a baton is way more portable.

It Gets Even Better From Baden-Baden! More Iolanta Recaps.

Edda from blog Dich, teure Halle was at the Tchaikovsky Iolanta premiere in Baden-Baden, rubbing shoulders with Anna Netrebko, Piotr Beczala, and Valery Gergiev. Who else was there? Petey the Gelbster! Go here for the post and more pictures, including a much bigger one of the big one above.

Netrebko's Iolanta: Recap from Baden Baden

 

(Above: Anna Netrebko and Piotr Beczala at a press conference for Tchaikovsky's Iolanta @ Festspielhaus Baden-Baden)

OC has heard from our dear Swiss correspondent, who gave her the skinny (figuratively, Netrebko being Netrebko) on Anna Netrebko's premiere last night live from Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, where the Russian soprano sang her first Tchaikovsky "Iolanta" for the theatre's Sommerfestspiele (in a double feature with Rachmaninoff's Aleko).

Our Swiss fan-on-the-scene reported a wonderful evening, Anna's comfort with the Russian repertoire making for a touching and captivating performance. Piotr Beczala's Vaudémont also impressed the crowds along with Sergei Aleksashkin as Rene, and Gergiev led the Mariinsky in perfect paces. Anna & Piotr's duets garnered the most applause of the evening, which was all enhanced by video projections featuring snowflakes and twinkling stars. Most everything on stage was given a black and white treatment to set the color palette and referencing Iolanta's blindness.

After the performance, Anna dashed away the post-opera gala dinner, sponsored by Deutsche Bank, in a polka-dot black dress, loads of red lipstick, ad bright green high heels!

Below are two pictures from the event, although none from the production. Our reporter says that the Baden-Baden ushers were on absolute lock-down with a scarily tight ~camera patrol~ throughout the entire evening.

~*~

(Above: The Baden-Baden Cartier store window display features Anna glaring-up from the jewels)

White Nights: Gergiev, Lang², and Eva Green Bring the Randomness

(Above: Montblanc CEO Lutz Bethge, Eva Green & Lang Lang)

Lang² is partying in St. Petersburg for the 17th White Nights Festival, and will join Valery Gergiev in concert tomorrow.

The two came together earlier tonight at the Mariinsky for Montblanc's "New Voices" concert and gala, along with French actress Eva Green. Montblanc's designated winners -- Baritone Alexei Markov & mezzo Kristina Kapustinskaya -- sang at the gala concert. The White Nights Festival kicked-off on May 21 and ends on July 19.

(Above: Gergs & Lang²)

(Above: Gergs & Lang² yay 4 hairgel!)

(Above: Gergiev & Eva Green. Awwwwkward!)

Click the link below for a load of pictures!

Valery Gergiev Gets Pinned

Gergiev accepted an award "For Merits for the Fatherland" earlier today from Russian prez Dmitry Medvedev at the Kremlin. Now Gergiev is off limits & they're going steady.

Gergiev's Easter Egg

Opera Chic pleads guilty of having a soft spot for that big sweaty combover'd Russian mess that is Valery Gergiev, because even if he, may the Lord bless his vodka-soaked heart, can make the Pastorale sound like John Williams and Richard Strauss sound like Def Leppard, he nevertheless can make magic things happen whenever he is on. And the Lord knows magic things don't happen very often in your average concert hall / opera house.

We therefore hope that he's going to be on quite often at the big  classical music marathon that is the seventh annual Moscow Easter Festival (the Russian Orthodox Easter obv.) Valery is running.

Among the highlights, a gala concert celebrating Gergiev's 55th birthday with ex-girlfriend Anna Netrebko, Olga Borodina and Vladimir Galuzin; performances of Mahler's 7th, 8th and 9th symphonies, two evenings of ballet with the Mariinsky ballet company and Ulyana Lopatkina.

Gergiev and the Mariinsky's orchestra will also bring music to the provinces and visit Kazan, Tver, Cherepovets, Ulyanovsk, Krasnodar and Vladikavkaz.

Back on the Scene, Crispy and (un)Clean

ok, let's set a few things down, and don't you dare start with me tonight i'm still jet lagged and a little bit cranky because OC is back in NYC from a much warmer Milan (wtf NYC? Winter much?) and celebrated her arrival with The Metropolitan Opera's la prima of Sergei Prokofiev's The Gambler.

Temur Chkheidze's production for the Met was dusted from the storage racks circa 2001, and the familar sets of green astroturf were laid. Since no opera production is complete without blinding fireworks and flaming horse statues rocketed up to the heavens, this production was, um, yeah. Maestro Valery Gergiev flayed the Met orchestra and gave it all his liquid energy rocket fuel, but the dynamic, brash, lively essence of Prokofiev's composition was a little too distilled. But more on that tomorrow (also with pictures!!).

Before I eat it (my bed, not my Flintstones vitamins), I wanted to share the MET's last pimping of their Wagner <3fest of Tristan und Isolde. Drink the hypeshake. I mean, the poor Gambler got pushed aside like the middle child between Debbie V and Ben Hepp. Gergiev who? I am a sinner! I have abandoned my Gergiev!

Tonight's program for The Gambler had an insert written in 14-point TNR font that said:

"Special notice! Tomorrow night's performance of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, starring Deborah Voigt and Ben Heppner, will be streamed live at metopera.org, starting at 7 P.M."

It's like the second coming of Juice Newton and Eddie Rabbitt. Go here for the Met newsflash.

OC will be back at the Metropolitan Opera on Saturday for Bohème with Gheorghiu and the Fargster. Two words: 1) drama 2) llama. There's also a planned tribute on Saturday to MVP Frengo, from today's NY Post. All you need is a quarter and a 4rd-grade reading level.

Valery Gergiev Will Force Your Climax

Guardian critic goes to Gergiev concert, wishes he hadn't:

Yet he launched into the first movement with a generic, up-and-at-'em approach that gave no hint of the size of the work, or that Mahler's musical architecture might demand anything more than hyperventilating theatricality. Every climax was forced home, every speed pushed to extremes. The brash first movement was followed by a homogenised Andante, squeezed out like toothpaste; a Scherzo whose grotesqueries were played up like Prokofiev; and a last movement that was just one lurid episode after another, without a hint of the formal subtlety and expressive depth that make it the greatest and most tragic of Mahler's finales.

OC wasn't there, luckily, but she trust this account: as cool as the on-the-wagon Gergiev can be, there is probably no other major conductor who can suck so bad as he can, at any given moment.

Beereft of Sleep, Running on High Spirits, Gergiev is a "Super Conductor"!

Transitions Online runs a profile titled, “Super Conductor” on Valery Gergiev and his great strides with St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky. His inhuman devotion is bewildering to all, quoting that he conducts nearly 300 concerts a year: “A popular joke has him conducting morning rehearsals in Britain, afternoon rehearsals in Germany, and an evening performance in St. Petersburg.” Personally, we liked the part about his May Opera Bastille performances the best:

“In May, the maestro was due to conduct two performances in the Opera Bastille. For the first performance, he arrived at the hall almost 40 minutes late, blaming travel delays. The management grumbled but swallowed its irritation. When the same thing happened for the second performance, a few days later, upon arrival the Russian maestro found another conductor already leading the orchestra.”

O RLY? That's not really how the story goes, but we kinda like this version better.

Robots Are Kewler Than Ninjas: aka, Berlioz In Space

Images from Hector Berlioz's Benvenuto Cellini: conducted by Valery Gergiev, it debuts on August 10 in Salzburg. Here at OC headquarters we think Neil Shicoff got lucky.

Rarely pulling out of a commitment in a humiliating reversal of fortune has, in hindsight, appeared as such a good idea.

Do U Want MOAR? Media from Gergiev Filarmonica Concert

Here’s more media from Monday night’s Filarmonica/Maestro Valery Gergiev/Nikolaj Znaider concert at Teatro alla Scala.

(from znaider.com)

(Valery Gergiev and Nikolaj Znaider during an appearance at Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia)

(above: Nikolaj Znaider promo shot from the program) (above: a view of Gergiev's rapidly advancing bald spot from Monday night's performance) (above: the program cover)

Gergiev at La Scala for Filarmonica: A Quickie

Opera Chic is reporting from the earlier event at Teatro alla Scala…an evening with Maestro Valery Gergiev and the Filarmonica della Scala. And Nikolaj Znaider.

It was a sumptuous night, filled with the die hard loggionisti who heaped Gergiev (and earlier Nikolaj Znaider on violin) with righteous applause. The program was Brahms Concerto in D Major, Opus 77 for violin and orchestra followed by Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony in B-flat major, Opus 100. The concerto was the final celebration at the end of a long day recognizing the fortieth anniversary of the gemellaggio between Milan and St. Petersburg (they're twin cities, like bff betw. mayors and various local politicians), with our main man of the Mariinsky Theatre. Whoopy-doo!

Although the placards in front of La Scala announced that the event was completely sold out, and the commotion of large trucks with fancy recording robots parked in the dusk seemed to corroborate, the theater was barely at half capacity, and the orchestra floor was half full.

The lights were brought up, and an announcement was made that the performance would be dedicated to the memory of (the apparently hard to pronounce) Mstislav Rostropovich, and then the narrator went on to describe the alignment of the great late cellist with La Scala. Film crews lined the front palchi, so expect this one for the archives (Rai Tre was also there for a direct, live broadcast if anyone caught it).

The Bach was transcendent. I literally was lost in the music. Your eyes THE LIGHT THE HEAT your eyes I AM COMPLETE. heh. no fo’reals it was magnificent. Gergiev was scoreless and batonless (which is significant because later for Prokofiev, he elected for both items). Znaider is the b0mb.

At the end of the Bach, Znaider made gestures to begin his bis. As the audience quieted down, he made a nice speech in English explaining that he had the honor of working with Rostropovich and that he had left behind a vacuum of lameness, and he is severely missed. He then played Cello in D Minor - Saraband. Bach, in beautiful remembrance of his hero.

Then came the Prokofiev's Fifth and the harps, piano, and full percussion filed-out from the wings, giving us obnoxious, brash, jarring, and then lovely. Gergiev is the master and was like WHOS UR MAESTRO?!

Then at the end, everyone went insane and a waterfall of candy, flowers, unicorns, and kittens rained on the orchestra from above, and the kool aid man came crashing through the back wall and was like OH YEAH! Just kidding. It’s late and OC is too tired. More tomorrow…

Gergievzilla Destroys Cincinnati

Cincinnati gets all in a huff about the sweaty, drunken genius of Maestro Valery Gergiev: with his Petrouchka and Tchaikovsky's Fifth, like Godzilla, the great Russian conductor terrorizes Ohioans, and dances happily on the smodelring ruins of their concert hall.

May gawd keep him safe and sound for many, many years to come -- he is out favorite manga-like monster plushy toy.

As Opera Chic's bff4e&e reader Donna Anna wrote us, and you cannot describe the Gergiev magik any better than that:

The first half was Petrouchka, the 1911 version. All those wonderful passages shimmered, and he shaped it beautifully. I've seen this performed with Nureyev but one almost doesn't need a ballet because the story plays-out in the score. His ability to shape dynamics is without peer. At the end, the strings were barely audible but the sadness was all there.

Tchaikovsky's 5th was just...amazing. Talk about shaping and structuring! During the second movement, I had the sense that the orchestra was like a pair of lungs breathing in and out, crescendo to diminuendo in gorgeous hair-pin sequences. All the textures and sonic lushness played out and the orchestra sounded top of the line.

He's fascinating to watch. Very spare; and not a lot of jumping around until the end. All the drama and movement are in his hands which are like rubber. And he did keep flicking his hair back.

The audience went wild. Four calls, the orchestra wouldn't rise for the final call and all the Russians in the audience were hollering full steam. Lots of bouquets, and all well deserved.

Lucky Donna Anna! Let's just hope Gergiev had a designated driver somewhere!!!111 //i keed, i keed.

Valery Gergiev in a Nutshell

Valery Gergiev's conducting was fast, loud and sometimes very exciting.

-- Tim Page

Valerij Gergiev is all up in Shostakovich’s business

(In recognition of the Shoshtakovich Festival in Rome, here’s a picture of Valery Gergiev and Nikolaj Znaider during their recent appearances at Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia)

As the "Dmitrijevič Šostakovič Festival" a.k.a "Shostakovich Festival" closes its Italian segment of the “Shostakovich World Tour: Shostapalooza!” this weekend (at Rome’s Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia),...has anyone else been wondering how Gergiev has been holding-up?!

Following his flagrant infatuation with Shostakovich these past two years, Valery Gergiev launched an ambitious festival, "From Rome to St. Petersberg: A Tribute to Shostakovich" in remembrance of the Russian composer’s centennial year. On September 25, 2006 Gergiev marked the true 100th anniversary of the birth date of Shostakovich at The Mariinsky Theatre with the revival of three of the composer’s one-act ballets. He is also currently spearheading two prominent programs, the “Shostakovich Symphonies”, and “Shostakovich on Stage”, which have already traveled around the world, and have drafted other outstanding conductors into the mix, such as Essa Pekka-Salonen and Shostakovich’s son, Maxim. Gergiev also recently recorded Shostakovich’s symphonies four through nine with the Mariinsky Theater Orchestra.

Next up for Gergiev are two more happenings, already in the making: a festival for the 125th birth date of Igor Stravinsky in 2007; and in 2008, the 100th year passing of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. My god, when does this man sleep?! He makes me feel so...inadequate!! *runs away while crying*