On April 13, the Hvorostovsky Krasnoyarsk Opera and Ballet Theatre presents the night of romance art songs So Beautiful, So Fresh the Roses Were. This will be a meeting with musicians and poets of the Silver Age in an imaginary music lounge.

Romance songs of the late 19th - early 20th centuries (a period on the eve of great historic upheavals) will be performed by the opera soloists; Anastasia Kasatkina will direct the show. It’ll be a part of a series of themed concerts, the first of which was Inspirational Poetic Lines: its programme was dedicated to romance songs and music in Russian literature.

The theatre is not a philharmonic society, so performers are not only to sing here but also to act, as the director said.

“My concert programmes are always connected with stage acting. This is not just a sequence of pieces, but an intertwining of the fates of characters. Or historical destinies. At the concert So Beautiful, So Fresh the Roses Were, spectators will have the opportunity to listen to romance songs written to the poems of the Silver Age poets and to see poets themselves: the singers will perform the roles of Anna Akhmatova, Nikolai Gumilyov, Sergei Yesenin, Marina Tsvetaeva. Of course, Alexander Vertinsky will come into the picture because he was very theatrical. We’ll use excerpts from the diaries and correspondence of poets. Many love triangles appeared among them, and two grand pianos on the stage will personify male and female principles,” explains Anastasia Kasatkina. “At the beginning of the last century, our fellow countrymen went through many losses: revolution, wars, repressions ... But people still believed that art was the only thing that could save the world in a difficult period. This is the key idea, and I want to apply it.

The concert programme So Beautiful, So Fresh the Roses Were includes chamber works by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Sergei Rachmaninov, Dmitri Shostakovich, Sergei Prokofiev, Anton Arensky, Nikolai Medtner, as well as composers who worked later; Georgy Sviridov, Veniamin Basner, Mikael Tariverdiev, and others.