The exhibition “Premonition of the Opera” will open at the Arsenal on April 28

April 26, 2024, 08:11

It will feature Valery Koshlyakov’s sketches for Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s opera “The Love of D’Artagnan”.

In the Volga-Vyatka branch of the State Museum of Fine Arts named after A.S. Pushkin (Nizhny Novgorod – Arsenal) will open the exhibition “Premonition of the Opera” (18+), prepared jointly with the Nizhny Novgorod Opera and Ballet Theater named after A.S. Pushkin. It will run from April 28 to July 21.

The exhibition precedes the premiere of Mieczysław Weinberg’s opera “The Love of D’Artagnan” (18+). The exhibition included works by artist Valery Koshlyakov, created by him when designing a future production.

Working on the design of the premiere at the Nizhny Novgorod Opera and Ballet Theater named after A.S. Pushkin, he created more than 30 sketches of scenery and costumes using the collage technique. The exhibition will be complemented by a video installation that gives the sketches a stage scale and combines them with the sounds of the first rehearsals of the future opera.

Valery Koshlyakov is known for monumental works that combine classical painting, fundamental images of world culture with unexpected, everyday materials – cardboard, tape, newspaper clippings, etc. His author’s approach perfectly coincided with the idea of ​​staging an opera that blurred the boundaries between a textbook text for Soviet people Alexandre Dumas, whose events unfold in the early 17th century in France, and the 1979 television film D’Artagnan and the Three Musketeers.

“We strive to capture the elusive period of preparation for the premiere, when the creative team discusses the concept of the production, the artist creates sketches, the musicians rehearse with the mise-en-scène director, the music is not yet sounded in its entirety, the theatrical scenery is still in the workshops. We have a unique opportunity to look behind the scenes at a moment when everyone in the theater is in anticipation of the opera,” said the curator of the exhibition, musicologist, candidate of art history, leading specialist of the department of creative projects of the Volgo-Vyatka branch of the Pushkin Museum. A.S. Pushkina Ksenia Anufrieva.

The premiere of the opera “D’Artagnan’s Love” will take place at the Nizhny Novgorod Opera and Ballet Theater on July 6 and 7. In the 1970s, the play was performed for a short time at the Moscow Musical Theater. K.S. Stanislavsky and V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko, after which it was not staged anywhere for many years. The return of the opera to the stage will take place in Nizhny Novgorod and will be the first acquaintance of the Nizhny Novgorod public with it.