Chaliapin festival in Kazan

The 28th Chaliapin International Opera Festival opened in Kazan, the great singer's native town, on Monday, February 8.
The festival of music opened at the theatre with a premiere of Puccini’ s Madame Butterfly. The programme also includes Puccini’s opera La Boheme, as well as Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades, Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, Rimsky-Korsakov's The Tsar's Bride, and Verdi's Rigoletto, Aida, La Traviata, and Trovatore (The Troubadour).
The programme includes Russian and foreign classical works, which were brilliantly performed by Chaliapin in his days.
The festival will end on February 21 and 22 with gala concerts.
The Chaliapin Festival was founded in Kazan in 1982. It is a unique event in the history of modern Russian music theatre. The first festival took place in Kazan in 1982 as a republican festival. It became a nationwide festival in 1985 and international in 1991.
During the previous celebrations Chaliapin’s voice filled the streets of Kazan. The loudspeakers, installed in the central part of the city near the monument to the renowned fellow citizen opened in 1999, reproduced the voice of the great singer for the residents of Kazan and its guests. They laid flowers at the monument to the accompaniment of his arias from the Boris Godunov, Ivan Susanin, Mermaid, and Maid of Pskov operas.
A religious service was held for the singer in Kazan's Epiphany Cathedral where he had been baptised. “Chaliapin was born on February 1, old style, and was baptised on the following day known as the Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple. With his great voice having been blessed, the singer glorified Russia with his talent around the world,” the cathedral's superior Father Oleg said.

09.02.10