On Wednesday 11th July and Thursday 12th July 2018, The Novaya Opera company – orchestra, chorus and soloist – came from Moscow to perform PUSHKIN at the new five-tiered opera house built by Grange Park Opera at West Horsley Place on the end of London.

Conductor                  Jan Latham-Koenig
Director                      Igor Ushakov
Lighting                       Timofey Ermolin
Costume Designer    Irene Belousova
Choreographer          Sergey Satarov
Choirmaster               Julia Senyukova
Orchestra and Chorus of Novaya Opera

Soloists

Pushkin                        Peter Auty 
Tsar Nicholas I            Artyom Garnov
Natalya                         Julietta Avanesyan
Catherine                     Irina Romishevskaya
Alexandrine                 Anna Sinitsyna
Baron Heckeren          Yaroslav Abaimov
Georges D’Anthès       Anton Bochkaryov
Gypsy                            Maria Patrusheva

 

The collaboration of Russian composer Konstantin Boyarsky and British Librettist Marita Phillips has created strong cross-cultural links between Russia and Britain:

Russia’s cultural and creative contribution enriches the world. The fountainhead of so much of this stems directly from Pushkin. Outside Russia, Pushkin is perhaps best known for the operas inspired by his works but for the Russian people he is their everything. This opera tells the story of Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin, the man and the creative genius. Such writers and artists belong not only to their country of birth but to the whole human family. They transcend politics, race and creed. They speak human truths for us all. They unite us.

July 2018 was 100 years since the Romanovs were murdered in Yekaterinburg. The final words of the opera PUSHKIN are sung by the gypsy to Tsar Nicholas I:
“I curse you and all who follow you. The house of Romanov will die and you – you will be remembered only as the Tsar who lived at the time of Pushkin.”

Fydor Dostoevsky said in his famous speech in 1880″
“Had Pushkin lived longer, he would perhaps have revealed great and immortal embodiments of the Russian soul, which would then have been intelligible to our European brethren. He would have attracted them much more and closer than they are attracted now. Perhaps he would have succeeded in explaining to them all the truth of our aspirations. And they would understand us more than they do now. They would have begun to have insight into us, and would have ceased to look at us so suspiciously and presumptuously as they still do. Had Pushkin lived longer, then among us too there would perhaps be fewer misunderstandings and quarrels than we see now.”