Friends Club celebrates New Year

The Friends Club held its New Year celebration on 15 December at the Mikhailovsky Theatre. The dress circle foyer served as a cosy and intimate venue for guests and performers alike. Adding to the light-hearted mood were the Friends Club awards presentation (held for the first time), and a festive lottery featuring an abundance of gifts and prizes.

Friends Club members selected the winners via a secret ballot. In the ballet category, these included Natalia Osipova, Irina Perren, Anastasia Soboleva, Leonid Sarafanov, and Alexey Kuznetsov, with Class Concert named best production. The public’s choice for the best performers in opera went to Tatiana Ryaguzova, Evgeny Akhmedov, and Nikolay Kopylov, with the Friends Club selecting Eugene Onegin as this year’s best operatic production. The ‘audience’s affections’ prize was awarded to conductor Mikhail Tatarnikov, who promised his admirers that he would continue to delight them with his work.

After the awards ceremony, the time came for a few gifts from the theatre’s opera company. Soloists Svetlana Moskalenko, Evgeny Akhmedov, Nikolay Kopylov, and Boris Pinkhasovich, along with Senior Concert Master Natalia Dudik impressed opera aficionados with arias and duets from popular classics.

The evening continued with the New Year lottery. Each draw elicited genuine excitement in the hall, with prizes including a month of vocal instruction, Angelina Vorontsova’s ballet slippers, reproductions of drawings by Marat Shemiunov, autographed Kings of the Dance playbills, and a Queen of Spades poster signed by Elena Obraztsova.