Press releases

8 Dec 2020

Belarus' Bolshoi Theater to host world opera stars on 29 December

An archive photo

MINSK, 8 December (BelTA) – The National Academic Bolshoi Opera and Ballet Theater of Belarus will welcome world opera stars Oksana Volkova, Nadine Koutcher and Pavel Petrov on 29 December, Yelena Balabanovich, the senior editor with the theatre's marketing communications service, told BelTA.

Belarusian tenor Pavel Petrov has performed in leading theaters in Russia, the UK, Australia, Switzerland and Italy. Now he is working at the Graz Opera in Austria. On the home stage the winner of Placido Domingo's Operalia in Lisbon in 2018 will perform Rudolph's aria from Giacomo Puccini's La Boheme. “If you love beautiful music, come to see the concert! I will definitely perform arias from Charles Gounod's Romeo and Juliet, Gaetano Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, Halka by Stanisław Moniuszko, and also Andreika's song from The Wedding in Malinovka by Boris Aleksandrov,” Pavel Petrov said.

Soprano Nadine Koutcher will perform, exclusively for the Minsk audience, Salammbo's aria from Citizen Kane by composer Bernard Herrmann. “The winner of many international competitions, including the 2015 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition, the holder of the two Golden Mask Awards, Nadine Koutcher joined our troupe in early April. She will sing Amina's aria from Bellini's opera Sonnambula and, together with Oksana Volkova, a duet of Adalgisa and Norma from Vincenzo Bellini's Norma and Recordare from Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem,” the theater noted.

The concert has been directed by Honored Artist of Belarus Oksana Volkova. She has performed at the world's best opera venues, including Opera Bastille in Paris, the Hamburg State Opera, Grand Theatre de Geneve, the Bolshoi Theater of Russia, the Metropolitan Opera in New York and the La Scala Theater in Milan. The artist will perform Margarita’s romance from La Damnation De Faust by Hector Berlioz, Santuzza’s prayer with a choir from Cavalleria Rusticana by Pietro Mascagni, Marina Mniszech’s aria from the Boris Godunov opera by Modesta Mussorgsky. In addition, she will sing Ave Maria, a piece composed by talented Belarusian composer Leonid Gurvich especially for Oksana Volkova.

“For such a large program we will employ a much larger orchestra than for any other concert. A choir will add solemnity and power. The main choirmaster of the theater is People’s Artist of Belarus Nina Lomanovich. The audience will hear Va, pensiero from Nabucco by Giuseppe Verdi and the incredibly beautiful Evening Music from the Perezvony symphony by Valery Gavriin,” Yelena Balabanovich added.

Although the concert will take place on New Year's Eve, it is difficult to call it entertaining, conductor Dmitry Matviyenko said. "The program is very serious. I am happy that it has lined up this way - turned out to be complete and interesting. It features rarest pieces, fantastic in their beauty. We will open the concert with Ludwig van Beethoven’s Coriolan overture. The second part will feature two parts of Sergei Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky cantata. I'm sure this music will touch everyone,” he said.