Evenings of Song at Elena Obraztsova Cultural Centre
Those who admire good singing are sure to enjoy the opportunity to hear all their favourite singers performing a brand-new repertoire of songs. Our opera company’s soloists would like to invite you to some chamber evenings to be held at the Elena Obraztsova Cultural Centre. In this wonderful hall, located in the very heart of St. Petersburg’s old town, at 65 Nevsky Prospekt, an informal ambience will prevail: you will feel as if you have come to call on some of your oldest friends, who are always delighted to see people gather together to while away a few hours listening to music.
Elena Obraztsova, a People’s Artist of the USSR, always reserves a particularly warm welcome for our singers, alongside whom she performs on stage to this day, and on whom she bestows her invaluable experience and mastery. “In a way, I feel as if they are my own children”, the acclaimed singer has said, on more than once occasion, of her younger colleagues in the world of opera. The series of evenings of song by soloists from the Mikhailovsky Theatre in the hall of the Elena Obraztsova Cultural Centre is a project that the great singer has always considered to be deeply personal.
The first in the series will be a solo concert given by Boris Pinkhasovich on 9 February. He will perform ballads by Glinka, Dargomyzhsky, Arensky, and Kabalevsky. The next concert, which will take place on International Women’s Day, 8 March, will feature two baritones, Boris Pinkhasovich and People’s Artist of Russia Nikolay Kopylov, and will be dedicated to the songs of Muslim Magomaev. The programme will include works from the repertoire of this famous singer, who was loved and admired by women all over Russia: from pieces by Handel and Rossini to Neapolitan songs. The Italian theme will be continued on 20 April, when the audience can look forward to hearing Rossini’s Les soirées musicales (Musical Evenings) and Venetian Regatta, and canzoni by Bellini and Donizetti performed by Svetlana Moskalenko, Irina Mikhailova, and Evgeny Akhmedov. The series of concerts will continue on a lighter note: the programme for the concert on 16 May will include fragments from operettas by Lecocq, Zeller, Johann Strauss, and Léhar. The soloists are Marina Tregubovich, Sofia Tsimbal, Evgeny Akhmedov, and Boris Pinkhasovich. On 7 June, there will be a concert featuring the music of Tchaikovsky; his ballads and operatic arias will be performed by Natalia Mironova, Ekaterina Egorova, and Dmitry Karpov.
The programme for the concerts was devised with the help of leading opera concert masters Natalia Dudik and Anatoly Kuznetsov, who will also be accompanying the soloists. Details on how to purchase tickets can be found on the website of the Elena Obraztsova Cultural Centre: http://www.obraztsova.org/.
