Adriana Lecouvreur

Francesco Cilea's opera «Adriana Lecouvreur» after the play by Eugène Scribe, with a Russian text by Alexei Sadovnikov.

The show turned out very elegant! One of the artists even said that this year we had a "show of costumes". From somewhere came the idea that the heroines should change outfits in every act (although before we had always managed with a single dress throughout the whole show). The heroes followed the heroines, and so did all the other participants. Besides costumes taken from the theatre's trunks and ordered over the internet, we had two collections of outfits designed and made from scratch:

— V. Sorokina — designer and maker of the heroines' 10 dresses,

— A. Sadovnikova-Potanina — designer and maker of the costumes for the divertissement.

The best opera houses in the world would envy us!

And what music there is in this opera!! The most beautiful arias and ensembles. True, there are few choruses. Over our earlier theatrical history we had grown used to singing them in large numbers. Many artists were disappointed at first and said it was a bit dull… but then they got a taste for it. There turned out to be much less to learn. Playing a vocal score that stands in for a whole orchestra was a special pleasure.

This year our theatre has two new performers:

— Alena Gurevich, a professional singer (we are very proud of this!),

— Alexei Melyashov (very "handy," he made the theatre a sliding curtain).

All of us, I think, were very pleased with what we achieved!