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Aleko
Semyon Kotko (Act Three)
Supported by The Stevenston Charitable Trust
About the Performance
Famed for his piano music, Sergei Rachmaninov's prodigious gifts as a melodist are revealed in his one act opera Aleko, an adaptation of Alexander Pushkin's poem The Gypsies. The title character, Aleko, tires of his upper class life and runs off to join a gypsy caravan where he falls in love with the gypsy Zemfira, with tragic consequences. The sumptuous scoring and compositional style marked Rachmaninov as a sublimely lyrical composer.
Prokofiev's Semyon Kotko, the tragic story of a young Russian soldier returning from war to a glorious Bolshevik Russia, is an epic work, full of nationalism and hopeful dreams of the future. It contains some of Prokofiev's finest and most dramatic music, especially in the climax of the thrilling and shocking third act which is performed in this concert.
Reviews
‘A glorious night of performance, and an education.'
The audience at The Usher Hall last night was treated to an enthralling double-bill of Russian opera, albeit in concert performance. It began with Rachmaninov's one-act opera Aleko. The three excellent main soloists were brilliantly supported by the orchestra and a fifty-strong choir as they told the tragic tale of Aleko and his lover Zemfira.
The second half was in fact only part of Prokofiev's five-act Soviet opera Semyon Kotko - the dramatic third act when a tale of simple village life becomes instead a story of war and brutal reprisals.
Soloists, choir and orchestra built towards a tumultuous climax, with the village set ablaze and its women folk lamenting the death of one of their men at the hands of the Germans and their Cossack allies.
There were clear similarities with Prokofiev's cinematic collaborations with Eisenstein and like seeing a concert performance of a movie score, one was left still wanting more. As the composer himself said, "When a person goes to an opera he wants not only to hear but to see". Having given us this fabulous taster, hopefully some day the Mariinsky Opera and Orchestra will return to the Edinburgh International Festival and perform the full opera.
Supported by The Stevenston Charitable Trust
Performance Details
Aleko by Sergei Rachmaninov, Semyon Kotko by Sergei Prokofiev
Concert performance sung in Russian
Mariinsky Opera and Orchestra
Valery Gergiev Conductor
Soloists for Aleko:
Aleko Evgeny Nikitin
Zemfira Irina Mataeva
Zemfira's Father Mikhail Petrenko
Soloists for Semyon Kotko (Act Three):
Sofiya Irina Mataeva
Semyon Victor Lutsiuk
Booking Information
Performance Dates:
- Sun 24 Aug - 8:00 pm
| August 2008 | ||||||
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| M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | ||||
| 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 |
| 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 |
| 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 |
- From £10Tickets:
- Approx 2 hours and 20 minutesDuration:
- Usher HallVenue:
