On 17 September the Voronezh Theatre of Opera and Ballet held the premier of Mozart’s opera “Don Juan”. Thus, the theatre opened its 56th season. The premier was visited by the governor of Voronezh region, Alexey Gordeyev, and his wife, Tatiana Gordeyeva. The performance ended with standing ovations.
The theatre of Opera had spent about a year preparing for “Don Juan”. The budget of the performance amounted to 9 million roubles. This performance of Mozart’s famous opera was staged by Mikhail Bychkov, the art director of the Chamber Theatre and the Platonov Arts Festival. Andrey Ogievsky, the art director of the Theatre of Opera and Ballet, said that working with a famous director was useful for the opera's actors.
Svetlana Dyudina, the performer of the part of Donna Elvira and a prima donna, said that it was difficult, but really interesting to work with the art director.
‘At first the working methods of Mikhail Vladimirovich were quite unusual for us because of his different directing style. It was new for us to work not only on the stage imagery but also on the relations between the characters. As a result, we discovered a lot of new things for ourselves, and we were absolutely excited about the performance during our final rehearsals’, said Svetlana Dyudina.
The prima donna added that she also had to work hard on her voice parts.
‘All the vocalists at our theatre have their own Russian style. And in this opera my voice had to be thinner because it is Mozart’, said Svetlana Dyudina.
During the rehearsals the actors worked with an Italian language teacher, as the opera “Don Juan” is in Italian. Anastasia Chernovolos, the performer of the part of Donna Anna and a prima donna, said that this was the first time they had worked with a foreign language teacher at the Voronezh Theatre.
‘It was definitely necessary because we had to understand what we sang about and pronounce everything without an accent. I think that everybody coped very well with this challenge’, said the prima donna.
An innovation of the “Don Juan” performance was the use of real weapons. The fight scenes and stunts were done by a stunt performer. For the performance modern multimedia technologies and new lightning and sound equipment were also used.
‘This performance gave our theatre a chance to dive into the XXI century. We never had such a performance before’, said Andrey Ogievsky. ‘Mikhail Bychko brought this modern style to our theatre. With his help we moved ahead 30 years.’
Information for the article was provided by the following website: riavrn.ru/news/voronezhskiy-opernyy-predstavil-premeru-dona-zhuana/
