The tour is over - the Krasnoyarsk Opera and Ballet Theatre is back from Moscow. Our artists took part in the 2nd Russian Festival of Musical Theatres "To See Music", which was held at different Moscow theatres. We performed the 39th season opening performance - the opera “Prisoner of the Caucasus” by César Cui.

Our performance was a concluding chord and a real gem of the festival. The audience warmly welcomed the Siberian artists - at the end of the opera spectators gave a standing ovation to them.

Svetlana Guziy, director of the Krasnoyarsk Opera and Ballet Theatre, shared her impressions of the tour: “We are very pleased to be invited to the festival - that means our team’s work was estimated at such a high level. Our artists were on top and the stormy ovation of the spectators was a further confirmation of that”.

After the performance, social networks were full of pleasant comments about our artists: “For more than 100 years, César Antonovich Cui's opera “The Prisoner of the Caucasus” was not performed. And now thanks to the Krasnoyarsk Opera, we have the opportunity today to listen to this rarity’s beautiful music. Bravo to soloists, choir, ballet, orchestra! Bravo to Krasnoyarsk Opera!” “This work faded into oblivion and wasn’t performed in the homeland of the composer for almost 100 years - thanks to the Siberians today the Moscow audience had a chance to hear the forgotten opera treasure and gave it a warm welcome. Congratulations to the theatre on a wonderful performance.”

But the Krasnoyarsk performance was highly appreciated not only by the audience, but also by music critics. Alexander Matusevich, the newspaper “Musical Klondike”: “The magnificent mountains of the Caucasus in the background and on the traveller curtain (depicted by Anna Kontek), colourful lezginka, bursting into various opera scenes (choreographer Sergei Bobrov), authentic Caucasian costumes are the feast for the eyes - the performance of the Krasnoyarsk artists makes an attempt to present the forgotten opera in all its pristine attractiveness... The opera performance is of high quality for which the theatre is honoured and praised. The perfectly performed dances, an orchestra of solid qualities and a laudable chorus (chorus master Dmitri Khodosh), and the last but not the least - a quartet of young soloists who, on the whole, sing well, though not irreproachable. In Moscow, they sounded more confident than at the première in Krasnoyarsk, especially in the second half of the opera - it evidently is the result of the “tour practice” of the singers, and now they won’t be, so to say, shy singing the opera arias on any stage in any country of the world.”

On the Krasnoyarsk stage, the opera "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" will be performed on December 10.

The tour was a part of the programme “Grand Tour. Interregional Program” of the Federal Centre for Support of Tour Activities of the Ministry of Culture of Russia.