The Mariinsky Theatre will open the 2019-20 season on 8 September

On 8 September the Mariinsky Theatre will open the 2019-20 season at two venues. At 16.00 at the Concert Hall Valery Gergiev will conduct the Mariinsky Orchestra. At 19.30 at the Mariinsky II there will be a performance of an opera that premiered in the 2018-19 season – Giacomo Puccini's La fanciulla del West, staged by Arnaud Bernard. The lead roles will be performed by Maria Bayankina (Minnie), Akhmed Agadi (Dick Johnson), Kirill Zharovin (Jack Rance), Andrei Popov (Nick), Oleg Sychov (Ashby), Sergei Romanov (Sonora) and Gleb Peryazev (Jake Wallace). Valery Gergiev will be conducting.

14 and 15 September at the Mariinsky II will see the Russian premiere of the innovative show Sleeping Beauty Dreams, which had its world premiere in December 2018 in the USA. Edward Klug is the choreographer, Tobias Gremmler is the set designer, Bart Hess is the costume designer, Laurent Fort is the lighting designer and the music is by NOISIA / Thijs de Vlieger. The lead role will be performed by Mariinsky Theatre prima ballerina Diana Vishneva, who will be partnered by Marijn Rademaker (Het Nationale Ballet).

September will also see repertoire productions at the Mariinsky II: the ballets Swan Lake, Romeo and Juliet and Cinderella and the operas Eugene Onegin, The Enchantress, Il barbiere di Siviglia, Rigoletto, Madama Butterfly and Adriana Lecouvreur with Mariinsky Opera and Ballet soloists. At the Concert Hall there will be a series of performances by prize-winners of the XVI International Tchaikovsky Competition, which ended on 29 June 2019 and revealed to the world young, new and dazzling musicians who were prize-winners in the categories "piano", "violin", "cello", "solo singing", "woodwind instruments" and "brass instruments".

Performances on the playbill of the Concert Hall include premieres of the 2018-19 season – productions of Richard Wagner's opera Tannhäuser and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's Kashchey the Immortal (conducted by Vyacheslav Starodubtsev), as well as a concert performance of Alexander von Zemlinsky's opera Der Zwerg, which will be performed at the Mariinsky Theatre for the first time on 4 July as part of the Stars of the White Nights festival.

On 26 September the Concert Hall will host the first evening of the project Film Music at the Mariinsky. A screening of Grigori Kozintsev's film Hamlet will be accompanied by live music. The score for the film, released in 1964, was composed by Dmitry Shostakovich.

Young audiences will be treated to the first concerts in the subscription series A Guide to the Orchestra, developed to introduce the symphony orchestra as an integrated musical organism, and The Academy of Young Theatre-Goers, which through interactive concerts and lectures reveals how opera and ballet productions are created.

The season at the historic Mariinsky Theatre opens on 21 September with Pyotr Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake with choreography by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov. Other ballets to be performed in September at the historic theatre include Michel Fokine's Pétrouchka and Carnaval, Raymonda with choreography by Marius Petipa and Rostislav Zakharov's The Fountain of Bakhchisarai, performances of which are to be dedicated to two important dates – marking eighty-five years since the ballet's world premiere and eighty years since the birth of Alla Sizova, People's Artist of the USSR.

In October there will be the first music festival of the 2019-20 season at the Mariinsky Theatre – the International Organ Festival. Between 11 and 19 October the Concert Hall will play host to eight acclaimed organists. The VII International Organ Festival will be opened by Thierry Escaich and the Mariinsky Orchestra.