Maddalena

For the 135th anniversary of Sergei Prokofiev

Sergei Prokofiev's early opera Maddalena occupies a special place in the composer's oeuvre. Written by the twenty-year-old author at the turn of the artistic epochs (1911, second version - 1913), it combines symbolist mystery, expressionist sharpness and the bright, already recognizable musical language of the future classic. On the NOVAT stage, Maddalena appears as a mystical thriller, where the familiar story of love, jealousy and betrayal gradually turns into a tense action somewhere on the border of reality and irrationality.

The plot revolves around a fatal love triangle. Maddalena, her husband Genaro and his friend Stenio are drawn into a dangerous game where passion and desire gradually give way to an inexplicable, almost mystical force. Staged by Ilya Andriyakhin, a young Moscow stage director, graduate of GITIS (The Russian Institute of Theatre Arts) and winner of the VII Competition for Young Opera Directors “Nano-Opera”, the performance transcends specific time and space. The everyday plot turns into a philosophical parable about temptation, inner emptiness and the impossibility of love. Maddalena herself appears not just as a femme fatale, but as an almost mystical creature, attracting and destroying everyone who falls into her power.

“For me, Maddalena is a story of beautiful evil. She is not a human being in the literal sense. She is a mystical, infernal character who embodies an all-encompassing abyss, emptiness. Maddalena is ontologically incapable of love. Everything that happens between her, Genaro, and her lover, Stenio, becomes part of a cruel game in which other people's feelings and lives are only able to satisfy her eternal inner hunger just for a moment,” Ilya Andriyakhin reveals his concept.

The Prokofiev’s score is expanded with instrumental and vocal works by the composer (Sonata No. 3 in A minor for piano, op. 28; “Memory of the Sun” to the lyrics by A. Akhmatova, op. 27 No. 3; Visions fugitives, op. 22 No. 1, 8), and also supplemented with the romance “Flowers of Night” (to the lyrics by Z. Gippius, op. 4 No. 15) by his close friend Nikolai Myaskovsky, to whom Prokofiev dedicated his opera Maddalena.

The performance has been created as part of a joint project between NOVAT and GITIS, “The first performances by creative teams of graduates of GITIS and other leading theatrical higher schools,” aimed at supporting young stage directors, artists and musicians in their first independent theatrical works.