BETROTHAL IN A MONASTERY

The performance has been awarded with Gold spotlights, the highest drama award of St. Petersburg in 2011-2012 season as The best opera house performance. It was directed by Yuri Alexandrov and conducted Alexander Goikhman. 

The plot of “Betrothal in a Monastery”, a comic opera by Sergei Prokofiev, based on “The Duenna”, a play by Richard Sheridan, is well known to the audience. In the theatre, known for its unusual director's approach, the plot of the Sheridan’s play is interpreted as a funny story about the everlasting conflict of generations, a conflict between academic style and innovation. 

Yuri Alexandrov, the director, says “I wanted my actors, who are mostly young people, to have a rest of the tragedy and to play themselves. We have moved the action into an educational institution, perhaps it’s the St. Petersburg Theatre Academy that I love so much. What we made is like a joke, something similar to a students’ party where acting and reality are connected organically. It starts like a kind of acting studies as a form of existence. Then it becomes a bright feast of theatre performance that gradually begins to dominate reality. This performance requires the singers to have virtuoso plastics ability, dancing and fencing skill close to those of drama actors.”