After a two-year hiatus, Great Performance
Tours is planning a return visit to St. Petersburg in June
of 2010 for the extraordinary White Nights Festival. Our previous
experiences in Russia’s most beautiful and most European
capital have elicited unanimous enthusiasm from our travelers
for the Festival’s highlights of opera, ballet and concerts:
“St. Petersburg for me was the best trip ever –
the music, the unbelievable palaces, the Hermitage Museum,
the churches, and most of all, an exceptional group”
(Rhea Miller). “All in all, many thanks for one of the
best trips we’ve ever had.” (Mr. & Mrs. Harley
Higbie, Jr.) “I must thank you for scheduling an absolutely
magnificent week in St. Petersburg. You certainly have a talent
for arranging a blending of all the arts available in one
location. The music, of course, was outstanding.” (Harry
Deischer).
Most
of these performances are given in the historic Mariinsky
Theatre in St. Petersburg, now under the leadership of the
indefatigable conductor Valery Gergiev, who is primarily credited
for the high performance standards maintained by the Kirov.
Operatic highlights of recent years have included Borodin’s
‘Prince Igor’, Tchaikovsky’s ‘Eugene
Onegin’ and seldom-encountered ‘Iolanta’,
Rimsky-Korsakov’s ‘The Czar’s Bride’,
Rubinstein’s ‘The Demon’ (a rarity which
we enjoyed in 2003), Moussorgsky’s ‘Khovanshchina’,
and Wagner’s ‘Flying Dutchman’ and ‘Parsifal’.
The annual ‘White Nights’ derives its name from
the short season when the sun virtually never sets. It is
an exhilarating experience to exit from the opera at midnight
into full daylight and to stroll along the canals of the ‘Venice
of the North’ in the early morning hours. Some of the
orchestral concerts are presented in the 19th century grandeur
of Philharmonic Hall just off Nevsky Prospekt and the spectacular
new Mariinsky Concert Hall.
Our
itinerary in St. Petersburg will include five nights at the
grand Astoria Hotel, a variety of four performances of the
White Nights Festival, and sightseeing excursions encompassing
the priceless collections of the Hermitage Museum; and the
great summer palaces of Petrodvorets (Peter the Great’s
Palace on the Baltic), the Catherine Palace in Tsarskoye Selo
(including the legendary, fully restored Amber Room), and
Pavlovsk (Paul’s Palace in Pushkin). Of particular significance
in Russia, our local guide Inna Samokha has consistently proven
to be the most informed and enlightening leader we have encountered
anywhere in the world. Her historical knowledge and political
insights have provided an invaluable education on each of
our former visits to St. Petersburg.
IMPORTANT:
The White Nights program has not yet been announced, but
we expect to have preliminary information by early March for
our FOUR PERFORMANCES of opera, ballet and concerts. (Please
call us for any further details.)
Immediately
following St. Petersburg, a short flight will take us across
the Baltic Sea for our first-ever visit to the intriguing
Riga Opera Festival in Latvia’s capital. This writer
enjoyed an eye-opening exploratory adventure in Riga last
winter, where the perfectly preserved ‘Old Town’
and the dazzling Art Nouveau architecture of the New City
– especially along both sides of Alberta Street –
justified the city’ reputation as the ‘Jewel of
the Baltic’. With the elegant Hotel de Rome within easy
walking distance of the classic 19th century Latvian National
Opera House, Riga will be a major discovery for our repeat
travelers in search of a new experience.
This
second segment of our Tour will include three nights in Riga
to embrace the three operas which are the centerpiece of the
2010 Riga Opera Festival. Inspired by the fine reviews which
the Festival has earned during the past few years, we are
eager to attend this year’s performances of Mozart’s
classic Don Giovanni; Donizetti’s ‘bel canto’
comedy, L’Elisir d’Amore (a refreshing production
which was a pleasure to encounter last winter.); and a new
production of Massenet’s romantic French melodrama,
Werther. Riga’s national company has yielded a number
of outstanding artists who are gracing the world’s leading
theatres today: sopranos Inessa Galante, Maija Kovalevska
and Marina Rebeka, mezzo-soprano Elina Garanca, tenors Aleksandrs
Antonenko and Dmitri Popov, conductor Mariss Jansens, and
ballet dancers Alexander Godunov and Mikhail Baryshnikov.
All operas in Riga are performed with English surtitles.
