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Victory Day. Concert

 


On 7 May, the Bolshoi Theatre of Belarus invites its audience to a Gala concert dedicated to Victory Day. ‘You will hear the hit songs of the war years with each one of them being certain to make you cry. It is really a holiday with “tears in your eyes”,’ says principal director Mikhail Pandzhavidze. ‘The main and perhaps the only goal of the concert is that our children and grandchildren never forget those terrible events. Alas, they are being forgotten..."

‘May 9 is a sacred holiday, one cannot put it otherwise,’ says the People's Artist of Belarus and the holder of the Francysk Skaryna Order Vladimir Petrov. ‘The Great Patriotic War is a special page in my life, as well as in the lives of, perhaps, every Belarusian family. My grandfather was killed somewhere near Dnepropetrovsk, my uncle was brought to Germany to a concentration camp, my mother miraculously escaped a near death situation since, as a daughter of the head of a collective farm, she was supposed to be executed. She often says, “I was not supposed to survive, but I did...” To which I always say, “So, now you will live long.” My mother is a tremendous example of humanity to me. I remember how she sang the war songs – quietly, sincerely and wholeheartedly – these songs I literally grew up with. I will never forget the first time I came to Belarus. When I was 12, we came to Mogilev, my mom’s homeland, from the Urals. And she anxiously walked around the places that were so painfully familiar to her; she talked about the war years: here the plane crashed, and there a tank was hit... I saw the defensive trenches myself, finding a soldier's helmet, and a handle of a grenade. The earth seemed to be thoroughly imbued with these fragments, memories of those terrible times. My mother still cuts the bread in large generous pieces – a remnant of the hungry war times.

Therefore, I always take part in Victory Day concerts with great pleasure, never refusing to sing the songs of the wartime. Sometimes I hear some people say, “How much more can you say about the war?!” But today when many facts are turned upside down, and in more than 70 years the young generation does not know what really happened during those years, one has to speak out, one must sing, must shout about it, must proclaim it to the whole world! There are only a few remaining witnesses who managed to survive the slaughter machine of the Great Patriotic War. But the memory should not be erased.’

On 7 May the Gala concert dedicated to Victory Day, will bring together the leading artists of the opera and ballet, the chorus and the orchestra of the Bolshoi Theatre of Belarus. The conductor of the concert is Andrei Ivanou. The director is Mikhail Pandzhavidze.
 

 

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