X St. Petersburg International All Together Opera Festival

The St. Petersburg International All Together Opera Festival was held for the tenth time from 28 July to 7 August, 2021. The festival was supported by the St. Petersburg Committee for Culture. The organizers of the project are St. Petersburg State Music Hall Theatre and Non-commercial partnership «XXI vek». The festival sponsor is «Bank "Saint-Petersburg» PJSC.

In summer 2021 the Al Together Opera Festival presented four opera performances: Les pêcheurs de perles by Bizet (28 July, Yelagin Isalnd), Don Pasquale by Donizetti (30 July, Yelagin Island), A Life for the Tsar by Glinka (4 August, Sobornaya Square of the Peter and Paul Cathedral) and La traviata by Verdi (7 August, Parade Square near the Catherine Palace, Tsarskoye Selo). Operas have been performed in three languages at once, namely Italian, Russian, and French. At the opening of the festival, St. Petersburg’s Vice-Governor Boris Piotrovsky congratulated its organizers on a bright start of the jubilee season.

This year, the Music Director of the festival, Artistic Director of the Music Hall Theatre Fabio Mastrangelo took his place at the conductor's desk three times  - he  conducted operas  Les pêcheurs de perles, A Life for the Tsar and La traviata. A well-known conductor, Honoured Worker of Arts of the Republic of Karelia Vladimir Stachinsky was Music Director of the opera Don Pasquale. The festival productions featured St. Petersburg Northern Sinfonia Orchestra of the Music Hall Theatre, St. Petersburg Sinfonietta Orchestra and Youth Opera Theatre.

The exquisite stage set of the production Don Pasquale was complemented by historic cars, which became an essential part of the theatrical performance. The cars were provided for the festival’s organizers by the film studio Lenfilm. The production of one of the best Verdi’s operas La traviata was supported by the The Italian Cultural Institute of St Petersburg.

All operas of the festival attracted close attention of the audience and community of professionals. The festival’s stage directors included Victor Vysotsky (Art Director of the festival; Les pêcheurs de perles), Hans-Joachim Frey (Don Pasquale, Germany), Irkin Gabitov (A Life for the Tsar) and Natalia Indeykina (La traviata). The original scenery for the operas were created by the production designer Yulia Goltsova, the choreographers of the productions were Konstantin Chuvashev, Maria Kolozhvari, and Irina Lyakhovskaya.

The lead parts in the opera productions were performed by the soloists of the major opera theatres of Russia: soloists of the Mariinsky Theatre Nikolai Kamensky and Ekaterina Krapivina, guest soloist of the Mariinsky Theatre Roman Arndt, soloist of the Mariinsky Academy of Young Opera Singers Laura Meenen (Germany), soloists of the Mikhailovsky Theatre Boris Stepanov and Alexander Bezrukov, soloists of the St. Petersburg State Music Hall Theatre Tigry Bazhakin, Anna Vikulina, Elizaveta Mikhailova, Sergei Chepurko, Dmitri Mulyarchik, Klim Tikhonov, Dmitri Grigoryev, Zhanna Pechenkina, Egor Olesiyuk, Anastasia Nekrasova,  soloists of the St. Petersburg Opera Theatre Vladimir Tselebrovsky and Ivan Sapunov, soloist of the Bashkir State Opera and Ballet Theatre, guest soloist of the Opéra de Monte-Carlo Kirill Belov, Prize Winners at the international competitions Naziya Amineva and Artem Borisenko (Moscow).

The honoured guests of the festival included an Italian opera star Daniela Schillaci and People’s Artist of Russia Vasili Gerello. The Choir of the Music Hall Theatre (Choirmaster – Lev Dunaev) and ballet of the Music Hall Theatre took part in the festival productions as well.

Due to the challenging epidemiological situation, the jubilee festival All Together Opera 2021 was carried out online.

The operas Les pêcheurs de perles and La traviata were broadcast live on the TV channel Saint Petersburg. In addition, online broadcasts were available via the Kultura.RF web portal of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, on the Russian Seasons international cultural project’s website, on the Peterburgsky Dnevnik publication’s website www.spbdnevnik.ru and its social network page https://vk.com/spbdnevnik, via pages of Gorod+ in social networks, as well as on the St. Petersburg State Music Hall Theatre’s website.

Thanks to the use of up-to-date technologies, the event’s audience expanded drastically, and the project became as available as possible. Over 300 000 viewers watched operas under the festival via the screens of TV sets and mobile devices this year.

St. Petersburg and Russian mass media actively covered events of the festival, for which the organizers of the All Together Opera open air festival are expressing their gratitude to all journalists and mass media executives. A great deal of support was given to the festival by representatives of the St. Petersburg Government, St. Petersburg Committee for Culture and Committee for the Press and Mass Media Cooperation.