Throughout the month of June, The Lincoln Center will be presenting a series of Russian productions. We invite you to share in a unique celebration of Russian culture by attending one of these amazing performances.

In the second year of its collaboration with The Metropolitan Opera, Lincoln Center Festival welcomes the famed KIROV OPERA from St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Theatre, performing one rarely-heard opera in concert and five of its celebrated productions for 20 performances, July 8 through 26 at the Met. Artistic director Valery Gergiev will share conducting duties with other distinguished company conductors. On July 8, Maestro Gergiev leads the North American premiere of Prokofiev's compelling opera Semyon Kotko, the story of a simple soldier confronting love and treachery amid war and revolution in 1918. The Kirov will perform three other masterpieces of Russian opera: Mussorgsky's Khovanshchina, replete with pageantry, history and intrigue set in the 17th-century; Rimsky-Korsakov's romantic and mystical fairy tale The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh; and Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, the tragic love story based on Pushkin's novel. Completing the schedule is the Kirov's production of Verdi's thrilling Macbeth and a concert performance of Anton Rubinstein's romantic tale of supernatural seduction, The Demon. Maestro Gergiev and The Kirov Orchestra performed a series of concerts in the first Lincoln Center Festival in 1996.

Further exploring Russia's profound music tradition, Festival 2003, in collaboration with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (CMS), will present a survey of the work of the great St. Petersburg composer Sergei Prokofiev. The two-part PROKOFIEV MARATHON will include numerous chamber works and all nine of the piano sonatas, and features performances by critically-acclaimed pianist Anne Marie McDermott; the Society's quartet-in-residence, The Orion Quartet; Artistic Director David Shifrin, clarinet; and CMS artist members including Ramson Wilson, flute, Ani and Ida Kavafian, violin, Fred Sherry, cello and Edgar Meyer, bass. Performances will take place in Alice Tully Hall, on two Saturdays, July 19 and 26.

For more information:
www.lincolncenter.org

Rebecca Davis, Marketing Department
rdavis@lincolncenter.org
212 875 5512