NIKOLAI RIMSKY-KORSAKOV
THE GOLDEN COCKEREL
Opera-ballet
Director Georgiy Isaakyan, Andris Liepa
9+
Duration 2 h 20 min
With one intermission
Great Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev gave the world the production back in 1914. The ballet scenes were choreographed by an innovative choreographer Michael Fokine, and costume and set design was done by avant-garde artists Michael Larionov and Natalia Goncharova.
Michael Fokine’s idea was that the production should involve not only opera singers, but ballet dancers as well. The dancers used pantomime and choreography to show action on stage and opera sing- ers sang, creating a semblance of an ancient chorus, commenting on the story. This emphasized theatrical approach and vivid entertainment seemed unusual to Diaghilev’s contemporaries.
Now, almost a hundred years later, The Golden Cockerel has been revamped by the artistic director of all performances of Russian Seasons of the XXI century, People’s Artist of Russia Andris Liepa, together with the Intendant and the Artistic Director of the Theatre of Natalia Sats Georgiy Isaakyan, who assembled a unique creative team, that is not afraid of innovation and bold experiments. The Golden Cockerel is not an archive restoration, but a creative flight of the Russian Seasons through a century.