At the Hvorostovsky Krasnoyarsk State Opera and Ballet Theatre the Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera Don Giovanni will be staged to a libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte. The performance will be the highlight opera event of the 2nd Dmitri Hvorostovsky Festival. This news was announced at a large press conference held at the theatre.

The production team of the opera took part in the press conference: the European artists who came to Krasnoyarsk at the invitation of the Krasnoyarsk Region Governor Alexander Uss. They are the leading figures of the world music theatre art: conductor Peter Feranets (Bratislava), director Michael Sturminger (Vienna), production designers Renate Martin and Andreas Donchauser, Professor, teacher, piano player and accompanist Christian Koch, and artistic director of the Festival Anton Levakhin. The director of the Krasnoyarsk Opera and Ballet Theatre Svetlana Guziy introduced the eminent guests to the journalists.

Krasnoyarsk artists will be involved in the production of Don Giovanni. Peter Feranets and Michael Sturminger have already held auditions with the soloists of the Hvorostovsky Opera House and students of the Siberian State Institute of Arts. Christian Koch was invited to train Krasnoyarsk performers.

The opera will be included in the theatre’s repertoire. Three casts will be involved, two of which will consist of Krasnoyarsk artists only. The festival curators will invite stars of the world opera art to perform at the opera premiere scheduled for October 22, 2021. The organizing committee keeps a lid on the cast list so far - both Krasnoyarsk singers and stars invited to the premiere. Mozart's work will be performed in the original language - Italian.

“The performance will be the centrepiece of the Dmitri Hvorostovsky Festival. We will reveal the festival programme a bit later. It’ll be larger than the one in 2019. You should always be ahead of the audience's expectations and introduce something interesting, remarkable, amazing. Moreover, the opera Don Giovanni is not only “the opera of operas”, or “the queen of operas,” as it is often called. Dmitri Hvorostovsky shone in this opera on various stages of the world, and this is also important for our festival,” said the artistic director of the festival Anton Levakhin.

As conceived by Anton Levakhin and the Hvorostovsky Krasnoyarsk Foundation for the Development of Arts, this performance opens the Dmitri Hvorostovsky Educational Program. Within this large-scale project, guest Russian and foreign specialists will work with Krasnoyarsk singers, musicians, and teachers.