The Giant by Prokofiev, sø. 29 mai 2022, Fra (2019/2022), I regi av Arkady Gevondov, Margarita Kunitsyna-Tankevich, Dirigent Mikhail Leontiev, Valentin Bogdanov, Mikhailovsky Theater, Saint Petersburg, Russia

Seryozha Prokofiev invented and wrote the opera Giant when he was 9 years old. The boy had just begun to study musical notation. But the impression of "Faust" and "Prince Igor", heard by him in Moscow, was so strong that, returning home to the village of Sontsovka, Yekaterinoslav province, Seryozha told his mother that he was also going to write an opera! He himself came up with the plot and showed his family the first musical sketches. To everyone's surprise, everything turned out to be coherent and even entertaining. And soon the performance of the first act of "The Giant" took place under the direction and with the participation of the author in the circle of the closest friends of the family. Many years later, Prokofiev left in his Autobiography a detailed description of his first and favorite children's opera. Therefore, although only 12 musical pages of the score have been preserved in the archives, after 110 years the Giant was revived. In the 1990s, the composition of the young composer, written for singing with piano, was reconstructed and orchestrated by the musician and writer Sergei Sapozhnikov. The first performance of The Giant at the Mikhailovsky Theater took place on May 23, 2011 and, despite its chamber character, turned into a world premiere. The performance was staged by the well-known St. Petersburg director Arkady Gevondov, the audience was the children who, as part of the Journey to the Backstage subscription, were the first to get acquainted with the “terrible” story about the evil Giant, who decided to capture the most beautiful girl of the fairy-tale kingdom and eat her lunch! We will not retell in detail the naive plot of the opera with its unexpected ending - the audience will figure it out for themselves. Moreover, after a few years, the “Giant” by Seryozha Prokofiev returns to the repertoire. The performance, beloved by children, can be seen at the final meeting of the Journey to the Backstage season ticket, during which young viewers will visit the orchestra, opera and ballet of the Mikhailovsky Theater