On April 13, the Hvorostovsky Krasnoyarsk Opera and Ballet Theatre will host a meeting with musicians and poets of the Silver Age in an imaginary music lounge. The programme of the romance songs concert So Beautiful, So Fresh the Roses Were includes works created on the cusp of the 19th and 20th centuries as well as the ones of younger composers including music by the soloist of the Krasnoyarsk Opera and Ballet Theatre Alexander Mikhaliov.

Alexander is not only a professional vocalist but also a composer. He graduated from the Conductor and Choir Department of the Krasnoyarsk School of Arts. Between 2001 and 2006, he studied at the Krasnoyarsk Academy of Music and Theatre to receive a degree in Composition (class of Professor Oleg Prostitov, a famous Krasnoyarsk composer); Alexander has been a member of the Union of Russian Composers since 2006. The duo of Svetlana Mikhaliova and Eugenia Solunskaya will perform the piano pieces by Alexander Mikhaliov: tangos Shatters and Dreams.

Alexander Mikhaliov will also perform as a vocalist: he’s going to sing art songs by Sergei Rachmaninov to the poems of Semyon Nadson “Time” and Georgy Sviridov to the verses of Alexander Blok “Our Lady in the City”.

It is Rachmaninov who’ll receive the most significant “representation” in the concert programme: director Anastasia Kasatkina included more than a dozen of his works in the concert - the romance songs The Pied Piper, I am not a Prophet, To Her, Spring Torrents, and others. The list of authors also includes Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Sergei Prokofiev, Dmitry Shostakovich, Anton Arensky, Alexander Vertinsky, Georgy Sviridov, as well as the composers who worked relatively recently: Veniamin Basner, Mikael Tariverdiev. The romance song of the pop idol of the first half of the twentieth century Alexander Vertinsky written to Georgy Ivanov’s verses - Over the Pink Sea - will also be sung at the concert.

The performance of a romance song requires not only mastering the art of singing but also getting the feel of a singer’s part. This night, the following soloists of the Krasnoyarsk Opera and Ballet Theatre will display their skills: Honoured Artist of Russia Vera Baranova, Pavel Antsiferov, Edward Arutyunyan, Aliona Babivskaya, Eugeny Baldanov, Denis Grechishkin, Anna Kiseliova, Andrei Kolobov, Vasily Korsar, Ilya Krivchikov, Olga Monastyrshina, Larisa Plotnikova, Daria Ryabinko, Inna Spodina, Kira Tikhonova, Anna Kharitonova.