Pearls of Music Theater
The program broadcasts the best performances of famous operas, ballets, musicals, and operettas, presenting their plots and the history of their creation. Before each act, the corresponding part of libretto is read, which makes the listening experience more vivid and comprehensible.
- Author of the program: Inessa Khachatryan
Sergei Rachmaninoff, Francesca da Rimini
This opera consists of one act, a prologue, and an epilogue.
The plot is based on the Fifth Canto of Dante Alighieri's “The Inferno” in “Divine Comedy.” The author of the libretto is Modest Tchaikovsky. Despite its beautiful music, the opera didn't become part of repertoires after its premiere in 1906. It was staged anew by conductor Mark Ermler at Moskow Bolshoi Theater in 1973.
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, La serva padrona
The Opera-buffa "La serva padrona" (The Servant Turned Mistress) is a short opera consisting of one act. It is based perhaps on the comedy of the same name by Jacopo Nelli. The author of the Italian libretto is Gennaro Federico.
Pergolesi wrote this opera as an intermezzo to the larger opera series "The Proud Prisoner" consisting of three acts.
The opera was premiered on August 28, 1733, at San Bartolomeo Theater in Naples.
Sergei Prokofiev, Romeo and Juliet Ballet
In 1933, the famous Shakespearean scholar, artistic director of the Leningrad Theater of Opera and Ballet after Kirov (now Mariinsky) Sergei Radlov suggested Sergei Prokofiev to write music on the theme of Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet." The composer immediately started to write. Parallel with making the music, he, together with Radlov and the theater critic and playwright Adrian Piotrovsky, also created the libretto of the ballet.
The ballet "Romeo and Juliet" was premiered on December 30, 1938, in the Czech city of Brno. On the national scene, it was presented after overcoming many obstacles, on January 11, 1940.
George Frederick Handel, Ariodante
It is not known who wrote the Italian libretto of this оpera; it is known only that it was based on a work by Antonio Salvi, which in turn is based on the heroic poem of Ludovico Ariosto “Orlando Furioso.”
Handel wrote about 40 operas during 36 years, starting with "Almira" and ending with "Deidamia."
Opera Ariodante was first staged in London, in the Covent Garden theater, on January 8, 1735. It was performed only 11 times. The lead singer was the then-famous castrato Giovanni Carestini.
Like other operas of Handel, Ariodante also had been forgotten for more than 200 years until it was staged again in 1971.
Pyotr Tchaikovsky, "The Nutcracker"
The plot of Tchaikovsky's ballet "Тhe Nutcracker" was borrowed from the tale "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King" by Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann. But the libretto is based on the tale "The Story of the Nutcracker" by Alexander Dumas the Father (1844), which was wrongly attributed to Alexander Dumas the Son in the "Theatrical Encyclopedia." Tchaikovsky worked on the creation of the ballet with popular ballet master Marius Petipa. The premiere took place on December 6, 1892, at the Mariinsky Theater along with the Opera "Iolanta."