Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra will open the Summer Festival at the Baden-Baden Festspielhaus

On 6 July Valery Gergiev, the Mariinsky Orchestra and Alexandre Kantorow (prize-winner at the International Tchaikovsky Competition, piano category will open the Summer Festival at the Festspielhaus in Baden-Baden, which runs from 6 to 14 July. The orchestra is setting out for Germany immediately after the close of the XXVII Gergiev Festival in Mikkeli (Finland). The Mariinsky Theatre tour forms part of the Russian Seasons cultural project which in 2019 is being held in Germany.

At the opening concert, Valery Gergiev will conduct works by Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Richard Wagner – there will be highlights from Richard Wagner’s opera Götterdämmerung (soloist – Eva-Maria Westbroek) and Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony (Pathétique). Alexandre Kantorow, recipient of the 1^st prize and the Grand Prix at the XVI International Tchaikovsky Competition together with the Mariinsky Orchestra will be performing Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No 2, which the musician performed in the finale of the competition.

The next day, Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra will be appearing with the renowned violinist and music teacher Daniel Hope. He will perform the solo in Sergei Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No 2. The programme also includes Dmitry Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony Leningrad.

The festival’s culmination comes with a performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Simon Boccanegra staged by Andrea de Posa (9 July). The lead roles will be performed by Plácido Domingo (Simon Boccanegra), Ferruccio Furlanetto (Jacopo Fiesco), Tatiana Serjan (Maria Boccanegra, known as Amelia Grimaldi), Otar Jorjikia (Gabriele Adorno) and Roman Burdenko (Paolo Albiani). Conductor – Valery Gergiev.

The festival concludes with a recital by Anna Netrebko (soprano). The piano will be performed by Malcolm Martineau. The programme, which includes songs and romances by French, American, German, Caech, British and Russian composers, has already proved a success in Austria, the Czech Republic, the USA and Russia – the singer presented the programme at the Mariinsky Concert Hall in November 2018.