First revival – 14th October, 2018 at 19:30 h, Large Stage
Conductor: Djordje Stankovic
Staging and Directing: Yuri Alexandrov
Revival Directors: Vesna Curcic-Petrovic and Tadija Miletic
Set and Costume Designer: Vjaceslav Okunjev
Assistant Director: Tatjana Karpačeva
Assistant to Director and Stage Manager: Vesna Curcic-Petrovic
Soloists: Nikola Kitanovski, Branislava Podrumac, Marko Pantelic, Vasa Stajkic, Ljubomir Popovic
The season ahead of us, 2018/2019, brings new premieres, but also the revivals of some older plays that our audience loves, but which due to circumstances have not remained long enough on the stage. We are beginning with the premiere revival of the opera Pagliacci by Ruggero Leoncavallo, in direction and staging of the well-known and acclaimed Russian director Yuri Alexandrov, with a refreshed team of the performers.
Pagliacci is a real example of veristic opera with great arias that have been sung by master world’s soloists, from Caruso to Pavarotti, with a strong, exciting high thrilling drama plot. The plot intertwines fiction and reality, bringing a scene into scene, stirring the privacy of the protagonists and their roles in a particular type of the Renaissance theatre called commedia dell’arte. Passion, love, jealousy, the intensity of emotions shall lead to tragedy.
Modern, erotic, dramatic, exciting and artistically splendid staging is arranged by the old acquaintance of Madlenianum, the guest director from St. Petersburg, Yuri Alexandrov who has already set the modernized version of Verdi’s La Traviata at Madlenianum. We have also had the opportunities to see his settings of the operas Not Love Alone by Shchedrin and Betrothal in a Monastery by Prokofiev two seasons ago when Saint-Petersburg Opera had a guest visit in our house.
In the explication of his direction Yuri Alexandrov says: “I am, first of all, guided by my attitude towards theatre, to which I dedicated my life. A theatre which is a subject of hatred and an object of worship, which is cynical and vulnerable, which oppresses and releases, a theatre of slaves and gods! A theatre of artists and buffoons! You can enumerate endlessly. In Pagliacci are my contemplations about inside of a theatre, the theatre which audience does not know. It is in a way the product of my struggle, my disappointments and enthusiasm, victories and defeats ... One of the topics of this play is the relationship between theatre and audience, more precisely- relationships with those ones that stand between theatre and audience.”
