Bolshoi Theater to open its 2002-03 performing season with new production of "Turandot"

Moscow's Bolshoi Theater is opening its 2002-03 performing season on September 8, but not with Mikhail Glinka's patriotic opera "Ivan Susanin," as is traditionally the case, but with Giacomo Puccini's "Turandot," Managing Director Anatoly Iksanov announced Tuesday.

The new production of "Turandot" to be presented by the Bolshoi company has been put on by the highly acclaimed American director Francesca Zambella. This is the Bolshoi's second version of the famous opera, put on here for the first time some seventy years ago.

In the coming season, the Bolshoi Theater will also present new productions of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's "Snowmaiden," Glinka's "Ruslan and Lyudmila," and Igor Stravinsky's "The Rake's Progress." Among the major highlights of this season's ballet repertory will be an original ballet by France's Roland Petit, after Victor Hugo's "Notre-Dame de Paris," and "Bright Rivulet," staged by the young Russian choreographer Alexei Ratmansky to Dmitri Shostakovich's score. The Soviet choreographer Leonid Lavrovsky's version of Sergei Prokofiev's "Romeo and Juliet" will be back on the Bolshoi's repertory, too.

Eleven young male and six female dancers will join the theater's ballet company this year, the Bolshoi's managing director said.