Name: Aleko
Start: 2022-03-10T00:00:00.000Z
End: 2022-03-10T00:00:00.000Z
Location: Buryat Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre

Organization

Baritone

Munkhzul Namkhai

Aleko

Tenor

Chingis Ivanov

The young gypsy

Contralto

Erzhena Bazarsadaeva

The old gypsy woman

Conductor

Vladimir Rylov

Stage director

Dina Orlova

Buryat Academic Opera and Ballet Theater

Ulan-Ude

Russia

Buryat Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre

Aleko Rakhmaninov

Public

Approved

The one-act opera Aleko is Rachmaninov's early, still student masterpiece, created in record time - in just 17 days. At the heart of its plot is not just love and jealousy, but the clash of civilizations, so familiar to the man of the 21st century.  

Who would have guessed that the graduation essay of a nineteen-year-old conservatory graduate would be performed for several centuries? However, the debutant's librettist turned out to be Vladimir Ivanovich Nemirovich-Danchenko, who was inspired by Pushkin's eternal lines. Thanks to these names, too, Aleko entered the history of world opera on an equal footing with the works of recognized masters from the very premiere.

The opera was successfully premiered on April 27, 1893 at the Bolshoi Theatre. In articles devoted to the premiere of Aleko, one can even read that Pyotr Tchaikovsky himself applauded so much that he almost fell out of the box. Most likely, this is a joke, but the opera really attracted P.I. Tchaikovsky, who contributed to its production and even asked the young composer for permission to give "Aleko" along with his own one-act opera "Iolanta". The second premiere of Aleko took place on October 18, 1893 in Kiev, where Rachmaninov himself performed for the first time as a conductor.

Rachmaninov's friend F. I. Chaliapin was an outstanding performer of the part of Aleko. A strange episode is connected with his first performance in this role. The production was timed to coincide with the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of A. S. Pushkin, and to perform the part of Aleko, Chaliapin put on make-up ... by Pushkin himself: he really saw a certain similarity between A. S. Pushkin and Aleko.

Aleko first appeared in the repertoire of the Buryat State Academic Opera and Ballet Theater in 1958. Director A. Kimov from the very beginning saw Vladimir Manketov as the performer of the main part. Shortly before that, the young singer played the role of a young Buryat Tumen in the musical comedy The Horseman's Song, filmed by Mosfilm in 1957. In the course of the film, Vladimir, who came from Buryatia to Moscow to study the art of singing, sings Aleko's cavatina. This episode was especially successful for V. Manketov, the audience was delighted with his velvety baritone. The singer often performed cavatina at concerts and began to intensively master the entire part of Aleko. The premiere took place in April 1958, in honor of the 85th anniversary of the birth of Sergei Rachmaninov. Manketov did not deceive his expectations: Aleko's game became one of his creative pinnacles.

“I love this composition for its naivete and student freshness,” says the artistic director of the theater, People's Artist of the Republic of Buryatia V.A. Rylov.

“When working on the opera Aleko, our task was to justify each hero, to make the characters multifaceted, to show a wide range of their feelings and emotions towards each other, as they say, from love to hate…,” director Dina Orlova told about the production of Aleko in 2021 . - It was also important for us to emphasize Pushkin's "And there is no protection from the fates." And also our performance about the fact that love does not die!

English

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