Program
Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953)
Cinderella, a ballet in three acts based on a libretto by Nikolai Volkov, op. 87 (1940–1945)
Concert performance
The musicAeterna Orchestra
Conductor Teodor Currentzis
Details
Teodor Currentzis and musicAeterna turn to one of their favourite works, Sergei Prokofiev’s ballet Cinderella. Prokofiev’s music, gentle and poetic, full of original orchestral colours and recognizable melodies, based on the eternal story of kindness, love, and the miraculous wish fulfillment, haunted the musicians throughout the orchestra’s 20-year history.
In 2006, Cinderella was staged in Novosibirsk. At that time, Teodor Currentzis held the position of the Сhief Сonductor of the Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet Theatre, and musicAeterna was part of the theatre orchestra. The production choreographed by Konstantin Simonov won the Golden Mask National Theatre Award as the best ballet, and Teodor Currentzis received a Special Prize from the jury. Ten years later, Teodor Currentzis revisited Cinderella together with choreographer Alexey Miroshnichenko in Perm, the city where Prokofiev worked on the ballet score in 1943. The 2016 production of the Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre won three Golden Mask Awards for the work of the Choregrapher, Conductor, and Costume Designer, while theatre critics specifically noted the role of the orchestra as an equally active participant in the performance. In the winter of 2016, the musicAeterna Orchestra conducted by Teodor Currentzis performed the ballet music in Moscow. Ten years later, in the winter of 2025, the musicians will once again perform this lucid music in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, reminding us that good is rewarded, love wins, and even the inexorable passage of time cannot extinguish dreams.
Sergei Prokofiev composed Cinderella based on the fairy tales of Charles Perrault and Alexander Afanasyev as a dramatic ballet structured by numbers. It features traditional ballet variations and adagios, as well as references to 18th-century Russia with its court dances. Most importantly, the composer transformed fairy-tale characters into three-dimensional beings who feel and experience emotions just like the author’s contemporaries. Prokofiev wrote, ‘I tried to portray the characters of the sweet, dreamy Cinderella, her timid father, picky stepmother, wayward, fervent sisters, and the hot-headed young prince in such a way that the audience would not remain indifferent to their joys and hardships.’ According to the composer, it was important for him to let ‘the dances arise from the plotlines’. MusicAeterna strives to preserve these lively feelings and the inner logic of their development by performing not just the ballet suites composed by Prokofiev himself, but the entire score of Cinderella, though with some omissions and permutations which are required by the custom of making only two parts in symphony concerts.