Start of "Russian Season" in France

The Russian Season in France is starting at the Chatelet municipal opera theatre in Paris on Wednesday.

The honour to open it was given to the world-renowned troupe of the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg which arrived in the French capital in full.

On Thursday night the St. Petersburg artists will show masterpieces of ballet art - the one-act ballets The Fire Bird and Petrouchka to Stravinsky's music, the Polovtsy Dances from the opera Prince Igor of Borodin, a ballet composition to Rimsky-Korsakov's music Scheherezade, and ballet miniatures to the music of Weber - on the Chatelet stage to the Parisians and visitors of the French capital.

The orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre will be directed by world-famed director Valery Ghergiyev who specially arrived in Paris for the opening of the Russian Season. The one-act ballets will be performed on the Chatelet stage till October 20.

Then the Russian artists will give six performances of The Nutcracker ballet of Tchaikovsky the scenery and costumes for which were made by Russian artist Mikhail Shemyakin who is now a permanent resident of the French capital.

The first part of the Russian Season in France will be capped with the production of the Bayadera ballet in the interpretation of Rudolf Nuriyev which was staged in Paris Opera when he was alive.

The Russian cultural season in France will last till July 2003.

As director of Chatelet Theatre Jean-Pierre Brossman said, it is not coincidence that one-act ballets open the Russian cultural season In France. According to him, precisely they "produced by Diaghilev and Nizhinsky on the Chatelet stage 93 years ago, dazzled the Paris public, having conquered Paris, but not the Russian Cossacks who settled on the Les Champs Elysee in a military camp in 1815, as some people believe".