WASHINGTON, July 22 (RIA Novosti) - A Russian opera that has not been performed in full since its 1895 premiere in St. Petersburg will make its US debut at the Bard Music Festival in New York July 26, according to the festival website.
"Oresteia" was Russian composer Sergei Taneyev’s only opera. In an interview with The New York Times, conductor Leon Bostein described it as “the one great anomaly in the Russian repertory” since unlike his peers Taneyev took his theme not from Russian folktales or history but rather antiquity. The libretto is based on a trilogy by the Greek tragedian Aeschylus.
Botstein, music director of the American Symphony Orchestra and president of Bard College, hopes that the performance of "Oresteia" will mark the start of a collaboration with Russia’s Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, where artistic director Valery Gergiev has plans to conduct the production in the 2014-15 season, the Times reported.
“Oresteia” opens at the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., on Friday and runs through Aug. 4.
