Moscow, Cheryomushki (concert performance) Tickets

Mariinsky Theatre, Saint Petersburg, Russia

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Important Info

Type: Operetta

City: Saint Petersburg, Russia

Acts: 3

Sung in: Russian

Ticket delivery: E-Tickets

E-tickets: Print at home or at the box office of the event if so specified. You will find more information in your booking confirmation email.

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If you order 2 or 3 tickets: your seats will be next to each other.
If you order 4 or more tickets: your seats will be next to each other, or, if this is not possible, we will provide a combination of groups of seats (at least in pairs, for example 2+2 or 2+3).

Cast

Performers

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Overview

When the composer of the very recently premiered Eleventh Symphony (1905) agreed to the proposal to write a musical comedy he staggered many of his dedicated followers. They had forgotten the fact that Shostakovich loved and was able to make his laughter infectious through music – we can hear this in his most tragic symphonies and in his works for theatre, his operas, his ballets and his comet-like ballet and jazz suites. They had forgotten that Shostakovich was not ashamed of his love of “easy listening” – musicals, gypsy song and jazz. They had forgotten that in the 1930s the Maly Opera Theatre had commissioned Shostakovich to re-orchestrate Strauss’ operetta Wiener Blut, and he had confessed his love for Offenbach more than once “in word and in deed” (it suffices to recall that he composed the music for the silent film New Babylon).
It is interesting that twenty years earlier Soviet Music (No 9-10, 1939) declared that “Shostakovich has completed his Sixth Symphony and is working on the operetta The Twelve Chairs after the eponymous work by Ilf and Petrov.” One can only guess why the idea never came to fruition; the probable reasons – and, of course, the possible censorship issues – that would certainly await this not entirely ideologically restrained plot... After all, just three years earlier Shostakovich’s vaudeville ballet The Limpid Brook based on a “collective farm” theme following after the opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk had met with harsh criticism in the newspaper Pravda (the editorial entitled “False Ballet” appeared just a few days after the sadly famous “Muddle instead of Music”).
The plot of the operetta Moscow, Cheryomushki proposed to Shostakovich in 1958 was absolutely Soviet. The libretto by Vladimir Mass and Mikhail Chervinsky related how Muscovites from communal flats moved to their own apartments in the newly-built Cheryomushki district. Funny, touching and, at times, semi-criminal collisions accompanied this “great migration of peoples”. And Shostakovich gave this innocent vaudeville vivid and submissively merry music.
In his New Year interview for Soviet Music (1959, No 1) Shostakovich declared in the same Soviet “newspeak” that “In merry and dynamic form the theme of the operetta touches on the incredibly important issue of the construction of housing in our nation...” But this is also where he discovered his own interest in this “incredibly important issue”: “Here there is lyricism, a ‘cascade’, various intermedia, dances and even an entire brief ballet scene. In terms of the music, there are at times attractive parody elements quoting popular motifs from the recent past as well as several songs by Soviet composers.”
Moscow, Cheryomushki is a revue production, a divertissement performance, a unique kind of interpretation of the traditions of musical comedy from Offenbach to Dunaevsky. The leitmotif song Moscow, Cheryomushki is an “everyday” waltz, the melodic features of which bring to mind the popular song There Were Happy Days. For the aria of the heroine recalling her school years Shostakovich the melody of his own brilliant Song of the Counterplan. He also “smuggled” his stunning ballet music into the score of the operetta , while for the parody scenes and ballet intermedia he used In the Garden, at the Allotment, The Moon Is Shining and Ah, You, Inner Porch, My Inner Porch, the Oira dance popular in the early 20^th century and even the thieves’ song Fried Chicken...
Critics were swift to praise Shostakovich for his sensational “turnaround in creativity” and the operetta was staged everywhere – both in the USSR and in countries with “people’s democracies”; in 1962 the Lenfilm studios filmed Cheryomushki featuring renowned actors and singers. Today, following a lengthy interval (due, first and foremost, to the typically Soviet libretto), Shostakovich’s operetta – like his early ballets – is again worthy of our attention for its musical qualities. Shostakovich youthfully mischievous, Shostakovich laughingly returns to the stages of musical theatres. Iosif Raiskin

History

Moscow, Cheryomushki is an operetta in three acts by Dmitri Shostakovich, his Op. 105. It is sometimes referred to as simply Cheryomushki. Cheryomushki is a district in Moscow full of cheap subsidized housing built in 1956, and the word is also commonly used for such housing projects in general.

Synopsis

Time: 1950s

Place: Cheryomushki District in southwest Moscow

Act 1

The old house where Sasha, Lidochka and her father lived subsides. Consequently, Sasha and his wife Masha, as well as Lidochka and her father, are granted newly built apartments in Cheryomushki. The group are driven to the estate by Sergei, who knows Cheryomushki since his on-off girlfriend Liusia worked there, and by Boris, who has fallen in love with Lidochka. Unfortunately, when they arrive, the estate manager Barabashkin is unwilling to hand over the keys, restricting access to many of the apartments.

Act 2

Since Barabashkin will not give up the keys, Boris cunningly uses the construction crane to lift Lidochka and her father into their new apartment through their window. While they are settling into their new home, Drebednov and Barabashkin abruptly burst through a hole in the wall from the adjacent flat. The new occupants are ejected, but Barabashkin's intentions are uncovered. He has refused to give Lidochka and her father the keys in order that Drebednov, who allocated the adjacent apartment to his girlfriend, could please her by illegally taking two apartments and joining them together to make more luxurious accommodation. By doing this, the old lecher tried to ensure Vava's continuing devotion. After the corruption of Drebednov is revealed, Sasha and Masha hold a housewarming party at their flat, where the good characters agree to defeat Drebednov and Barabashkin.

In the closing scene, Boris attempts to exploit a previous liaison with Vava by making love to her when he knows Drebednov will see them, thus undermining their affair. However, his underhand plot is dismissed by his idealistic friends, who seek a less realistic solution. Liusia helps the tenants create a magic garden, complete with a bench, where bureaucrats are not heard and only the truth is told. Consequently, Drebednov and Barabashkin confess their crimes and are vanquished. They all live happily ever after.

Venue Info

Mariinsky Theatre - Saint Petersburg
1 Theatre Square

The Mariinsky Theatre is a historic theatre of opera and ballet in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Opened in 1860, it became the preeminent music theatre of late 19th-century Russia, where many of the stage masterpieces of Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov received their premieres. Through most of the Soviet era, it was known as the Kirov Theatre. Today, the Mariinsky Theatre is home to the Mariinsky Ballet, Mariinsky Opera and Mariinsky Orchestra. Since Yuri Temirkanov's retirement in 1988, the conductor Valery Gergiev has served as the theatre's general director.

The theatre is named after Empress Maria Alexandrovna, wife of Tsar Alexander II. There is a bust of the Empress in the main entrance foyer. The theatre's name has changed throughout its history, reflecting the political climate of the time.

The theatre building is commonly called the Mariinsky Theatre. The companies that operate within it have for brand recognition purposes retained the Kirov name, acquired during the Soviet era to commemorate the assassinated Leningrad Communist Party leader Sergey Kirov (1886–1934).

The Imperial drama, opera and ballet troupe in Saint Petersburg was established in 1783, at the behest of Catherine the Great, although an Italian ballet troupe had performed at the Russian court since the early 18th century. Originally, the ballet and opera performances were given in the wooden Karl Knipper Theatre on Tsaritsa Meadow, near the present-day Tripartite Bridge (also known as the Little Theatre or the Maly Theatre). The Hermitage Theatre, next door to the Winter Palace, was used to host performances for an elite audience of aristocratic guests invited by the Empress.

A permanent theatre building for the new company of opera and ballet artists was designed by Antonio Rinaldi and opened in 1783. Known as the Imperial Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre the structure was situated on Carousel Square, which was renamed Theatre Square in honour of the building. Both names – "Kamenny" (Russian word for "stone") and "Bolshoi" (Russian word for "big") – were coined to distinguish it from the wooden Little Theatre. In 1836, the Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre was renovated to a design by Albert Cavos (son of Catterino Cavos, an opera composer), and served as the principal theatre of the Imperial Ballet and opera.

On 29 January 1849, the Equestrian circus (Конный цирк) opened on Theatre Square. This was also the work of the architect Cavos. The building was designed to double as a theatre. It was a wooden structure in the then-fashionable neo-Byzantine style. Ten years later, when this circus burnt down, Albert Cavos rebuilt it as an opera and ballet house with the largest stage in the world. With a seating capacity of 1,625 and a U-shaped Italian-style auditorium, the theatre opened on 2 October 1860, with a performance of A Life for the Tsar. The new theatre was named Mariinsky after its imperial patroness, Empress Maria Alexandrovna.

Under Yuri Temirkanov, Principal Conductor from 1976 to 1988, the Opera Company continued to stage innovative productions of both modern and classic Russian operas. Although functioning separately from the Theatre’s Ballet Company, since 1988 both companies have been under the artistic leadership of Valery Gergiev as Artistic Director of the entire Theatre.

The Opera Company has entered a new era of artistic excellence and creativity. Since 1993, Gergiev’s impact on opera there has been enormous. Firstly, he reorganized the company’s operations and established links with many of the world's great opera houses, including the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, the Metropolitan Opera, the Opéra Bastille, La Scala, La Fenice, the Israeli Opera, the Washington National Opera and the San Francisco Opera. Today, the Opera Company regularly tours to most of these cities.

Gergiev has also been innovative as far as Russian opera is concerned: in 1989, there was an all-Mussorgsky festival featuring the composer’s entire operatic output. Similarly, many of Prokofiev’s operas were presented from the late 1990s. Operas by non-Russian composers began to be performed in their original languages, which helped the Opera Company to incorporate world trends. The annual international "Stars of the White Nights Festival" in Saint Petersburg, started by Gergiev in 1993, has also put the Mariinsky on the world’s cultural map. That year, as a salute to the imperial origins of the Mariinsky, Verdi's La forza del destino, which received its premiere in Saint Petersburg in 1862, was produced with its original sets, costumes and scenery. Since then, it has become a characteristic of the "White Nights Festival" to present the premieres from the company’s upcoming season during this magical period, when the hours of darkness practically disappear as the summer solstice approaches.

Presently, the Company lists on its roster 22 sopranos (of whom Anna Netrebko may be the best known); 13 mezzo-sopranos (with Olga Borodina familiar to US and European audiences); 23 tenors; eight baritones; and 14 basses. With Gergiev in charge overall, there is a Head of Stage Administration, a Stage Director, Stage Managers and Assistants, along with 14 accompanists.