The Cat’s House is built!

On 14 and 15 March opera for children by Pavel Valdgardt were successfully premiered at the Bolshoi Theatre of Belarus. As the artistic director of the theatre, Valentin Elizariev, said, the idea of developing children's repertoire is gradually being implemented: ‘We understand that by expanding the children's repertoire, we are preparing the future generation to accept more serious compositions. Step by step, we will bring them to the top of world music in both opera and ballet’. (By the way, in the new season we will perform another opera for children: Pinocchio by Gloria Bruni).

Maestro Aleh Lessoun (the musical director of the production) conducted both evenings. He tried to make Valdgardt 's work interesting, light and transparent. The story of The Cat’s House is quite unexpected for our theatre: the artists work with puppets. The director Daria Potaturko and designer Ekaterina Shimanovich took the constructor principle as a basis for scenography. They also used three types of puppets: jigging puppet for soloists, rod-puppets for children’s studio and "costume-mechanical" puppets for the chorus. And the action turned out to be bright, playful and exciting. Thanks to the soloists, chorus (chorusmaster: Sergey Agranovich) and orchestra artists and young artists of the Children's Musical Theatre Studio (manager: Elena Neronskaya).

The premier featured Andrey Klipo as Mr Cat, Elena Bundeleva as Mrs Cat, Yury Bolotko as the Rooster, Svetlana Marusevich as the Hen, Dmitry Kapilov as Mr Goat, Marina Moroz as Mrs Goat, Anastasia Kardash as the Pig, artists of the Children's Musical Theatre Studio Anna Temusheva and Veronika Shabunya as the Kittens. On 15 March these roles were performed by Dzianis Yantsevich, Elena Zolotova, Alexander Zhukov, Olga Malinouskaya, Kriskentia Stasenko, Pavel Trofimik, Marina Aksentsova, Marina Moroz, Elena Tabolich.

Next time you can see The Cat’s House on 4 April, 10 and 24 May.

Congratulations to the production team, theatre and our audience with such an amazing production, which undoubtedly will embellish the children's repertoire!