The Count of Monte Cristo by Wildhorn, Fra (2021/2022), I regi av Miklós-Gábor Kerényi, Dirigent Alexey Nefedov, St Petersburg Theater of Musical Comedy, Saint Petersburg, Russia

The world premiere of The Count of Monte Cristo took place on March 14, 2009 at the Theater St. Gallen in Switzerland. This is one of the great musicals by Frank Wildhorn, a world-renowned composer, author of numerous hits and a Grammy award winner. The libretto of the project is based on the novel of the same name by A. Dumas by the composer's constant co-author Jack Murphy. And when creating the musical image of the main character, the composer was guided by the brilliant German actor Thomas Borchert, who played the role of Edmond Dantes / Count of Monte Cristo at the Swiss premiere of the musical. According to the plot, the young sailor Edmond Dantes, on the day of his engagement with his beloved Mercedes, ends up behind bars on a false denunciation of his former friends. He spends fourteen years in cruel imprisonment on an island in the castle of If. Having miraculously found himself free, the young man takes a new name for himself, becoming the Count of Monte Cristo, and decides to take revenge on the offenders ... The Russian version of The Count of Monte Cristo was staged by Miklos Gabor Kerenyi (KERO), a long-term partner of the Musical Comedy Theater. His play "Jekyll and Hyde" based on F. Wildhorn's debut musical has been on the poster of the Musical Comedy Theater for the fourth season already, collecting unchanged sold out houses. Especially for the Russian production, the composer, at the invitation of the theater, who visited St. Petersburg with a recital in May 2017, wrote additional musical numbers. And the libretto of the musical was significantly revised by the author of the Russian text, Susanna Tsiryuk, in accordance with the additions made. Exclusively for the St. Petersburg production, the Hungarian production team has created exquisite stage structures full of sea romance and inviting on an exciting journey. And costume designer Olga Shaishmelashvili drew more than two hundred sketches in which corsets and camisoles from the Restoration period are seen through the eyes of a person of the XXI century.