The theatre will take part in the festival “Seeing Music” in Moscow

 "St. Petersburg Opera" is a theatre that has been a regular participant in the festival since its inception. In 2016, the chamber opera brought two performances to Moscow “ Les pêcheurs de perles ” by G. Bizet and “Not Only Love” by R.Shchedrin.

In 2017, the theatre presented 3 productions at once: “ Die Fledermaus” by J. Strauss, “Don Giovanni” by W.A. Mozart and the "The Rape of Lucretia" by B. Britten. Last year, the St. Petersburg Opera brought two masterpieces of French classics, the operetta “Les cloches de Corneville”by R.Planquette and the opera “Faust” by C. Gounod.

In the frameworks of the festival “Seeing Music” in 2019, the theatre  under the direction of People's Artist of Russia Yuri Alexandrov will present “Il Barbiere di Siviglia” by G. Rossini (October 26) and “Die Entführung aus dem Serail” by W.A. Mozart (October 27) on the stage of Helikon Opera.

“Il Barbiere di Siviglia” is an opera that seems to have been created for the troupe of St. Petersburg Opera, which has the necessary set of voices and wonderful acting skills. Yury Alexandrov known for his extraordinary reading of opera scores staged the play "in the classical style".

 “It is a long way of comprehension of Rossini's art. Rossini cannot be sung badly. 27 years after the foundation of the theatre, we have a team that can play this play as it should be. This is a crucial step in the theater’s move to the top. Household comedy is always interesting. Love, jealousy, betrayal ... These feelings are close and understandable to people in any era, rather in our time or last century ... Nevertheless, we want to improve this everyday routine story and create the atmosphere of the holiday, lightness, grace, brilliance. We will play ‘Il Barbiere di Siviglia' in Italian language to preserve the stylistic features of the opera, the phonetics of the sound and vocals. Although playing in the original language somewhat deprives the performance of some comical points, the situational comedy remains, where humor arises from the whole meaning rather than from the text itself. The complexity of our work lies in the fact that this is one of the most popular operas, which is quite familiar to people. We want to look at it with a fresh look, so the 'filling' of the performance will be modern and in our theater there are no non-modern performances”, Yury Alexandrov says.

“Die Entführung aus dem Serail” is the first national opera written in the tradition of the singspiel, which now remains in the world repertoire the oldest opera in the German language. The genre singspiel which is a fun play with music, was distributed in Germany and Austria in the late XVIII - early XIX centuries. All the action is supported with conversational dialogues, and musical acts reveal the feelings of the characters.

Along with the melodies of the Austrian and German folk songs, there is a buffoon patter is shown, virtuoso roulades are combined with an expressive, intonationally truthful recitative.

Mozart's work on the opera coincided with the composer's marriage to Constance Weber. Mozart's father was against this marriage, but the situation was resolved instantly: Mozart kidnapped Constance. The marriage took place three weeks after the premiere of the opera. It was the happiest period in the life of Mozart, which is reflected in the music. In addition, the main character of the opera has the same name as Wolfgang Amadeus' wife.