The Rome Opera House opens with its premiere - "Stravinski Night"

The Rome Opera House opens on Friday, after a summer interval. That day it will give its premiere - "Stravinsky Night." The performance includes "The Firebird" and "Petrushka" ballets on the music of Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. The ballets, earlier staged by famous Russian choreographer Mikhail Fokin, have been reconstructed by well-known dancer and choreographer Andris Liepa.

The scenery of the ballets was made by Russian painters Anna and Anatoly Nezhny in accordance with the original sketches by Benois, Golovin and Bakst.

For the first time "The Firebird" and "Petrushka" were shown in 1910 and 1911 in Paris during the famous Russian Seasons, and since then, as many other Fokin's ballets, they have remained in the repertoire of world theatres. However, "The Firebird," reproduced by Andris Liepa in the Mariinsky Opera and Ballet House, returned to Russia only 1992.

This spring, at the invitation of the management of the Rome Opera House, Andris Liepa reconstructed on its stage three other ballets of the Russian Seasons - "Scheherazade" by Rimsky-Korsakov, The "Games" by Claude Debussy and "The Rite of Spring" by Igor Stravinsky. These ballets, which were united in one performance under the name of "Fokin-Nezhinsky Night," were shown with a great success by the ballet company of the Rome Opera House in Moscow in May, this year.