Carmen Suite. Restart

‘It was amazing! Carmen Suite captured in one movement and held until the very last moment. Thank you very much for the revival of this ballet!.. It was the high-day of the spirit!.. I can’t speak for other viewers, but this triumph of Carmen Suite revival, triumph and epicism of Carmina Burana defined the feeling of new pages of the Bolshoi, a sense of pride for our Bolshoi…’

It is a feedback the audience, who on 24 April came to the Evening of one-act ballets staged by Valentin Elizariev – Karl Orff’s Carmina Burana and Georges Bizet and Rodion Shchedrin’s Carmen Suite. These two choreographic productions were always performed together at the Bolshoi Theatre.

The evening of 24 April was not only the beginning of a new format of Carmen Suite – renewal. This evening was an evening of unforgettable meetings. You can enjoy an unforgettable meeting with master- the artistic director of the theatre, People's Artist of the USSR and Belarus, professor Valentin Elizariev. People was also able to see the beautiful divas, who so vividly and talented performed the great role of Carmen at different times. Over the 45-year history of the production, 12 ballerinas performed the title role. On 24 April the audience applauded 8 of them. In the Chamber Hall Lyudmila Brzhozovskaya, Inessa Dushkevich, Tatyana Shemetovets, Ekaterina Fadeeva, Olga Gaiko, Maryna Vezhnavets, Irina Eromkina, Lyudmila Kudryavtseva answered questions from the audience with undisguised pleasure, shared touching and warm memories of their Carmen, gave autographs to the admirers and expressed gratitude to Valentin Elizariev for the realization of their professional dream to play Carmen. And after the performance all of them (together with the young ballerina Liudmila Ulantsava) came on stage to support the master.

The retrospective photographic exhibition was opened in the foyer of the dress circle and will last for several weeks. Thanks to the talented photographers, who managed to catch, capture and leave in history the true feelings and emotions that artists gave to the audience during the performance, you will have an incredible opportunity to look into the past and see the scenes from Carmen Suite, since 1974.

Carmen Suite is the first production of the People's Artist of the USSR and Belarus Valentin Elizariev, who is now the artistic director of the theatre, on the stage of the Bolshoi. In far 1974, after the premiere of Carmen Suite artists of the Belarusian Bolshoi lift and throw him up! ‘I almost fell’ Elizariev laughed. This ballet has toured all over the world. The audiences of Poland and Bulgaria, Greece and Israel, China and Great Britain, France and India, Germany and Moldova, Spain and Thailand and other countries applauded our artists. Yes, Georges Bizet and Rodion Shchedrin’s ballet was already performed in Moscow, but the Belarusian production is a completely different story. Elizariev’s libretto based mostly on Alexander Blok’s cycle of poems Carmen (not on Prosper Mérimée novel).

Next time Carmen Suite and Carmina Burana will be performed on 27 May.