The Kirov's Stars of the White Nights Festival opens this Friday with a new/old production of La Bayadere, and continues till the end of June.
http://www.mariinsky.ru/en/playbill?pbmy=200206

<small>[ 09 April 2004, 07:12 AM: Message edited by: Stuart Sweeney ]</small>

I have been reading quite a bit about the history of this festival in John Ardoin's "Valery Gergiev and the Kirov, A Story of Survival," Amadeus Press, 2001.<P>A fascinating book, by the way.

I'm still miffed that i can't go , i was so looking forward to it..everything planned etc!! oh well it'll soon be Christmas and i can go then!

A preview article for all the art forms on display: <P><B>Keeping traditions alive</B><BR>by Peter Morley in The St Petersburg Times<P><BR>For the city's classical-music fans and opera and ballet lovers, June brings a feast of entertainment, as the Mariinsky Theater launches the tenth running of its internationally renowned festival, "Stars of the White Nights."<P> <A HREF="http://www.sptimes.ru/archive/times/773/features/a_6522.htm" TARGET=_blank>http://www.sptimes.ru/archive/times/773/features/a_6522.htm</A> <P>Linked to this article, here is an image of choreographer Sergei Vikharev (l) and dancers Nikolai Tsiskaridze and Darya Pavlenko in rehearsal for the Mariinsky Theater's new staging of "La Bayadere," which opens the theater's annual "Stars of the White Nights" festival on Friday.<P><A HREF="http://www.sptimes.ru/archive/times/773/features/a_0_1987.htm" TARGET=_blank><B>click for more</B></A><P><BR>And also an image of The Mariinsky's Artistic Director, Valery Gergiev, who will be conducting most of the performances in the festival.<BR> <A HREF="http://www.sptimes.ru/archive/times/773/features/a_0_1988.htm" TARGET=_blank><B>click for more</B></A><P><p>[This message has been edited by Stuart Sweeney (edited June 19, 2002).]

The Mariinsky website announced that on the 30th of June, the closing night of the White Nights Festival,"Swan Lake" will be danced by Svetlana Zakharova and Nikolai Tsiskaridze.

I just returned from St. Petersburg where I spent several nights attending the White Nights Festival. Svetlana Zakharova, Ilya Kuznetsov were splendid in Le Corsaire on Wed. night. Samodurov, now based in Amsterdam, danced Ali.

<B>Tales from the crumbling city</B> <BR>By Andrew Jack for The Financial Times<P> <BR>There is something very satisfying about strolling out at the end of an evening of opera to find the sun is still shining. Especially when it is an excellent if lengthy performance, at the heart of one of the world's most attractive cities.<P>This year the annual Stars of the White Nights festival in St Petersburg offers an exclusively Russian extravaganza of opera, ballet and concerts, sending a message of revival of national pride and optimism after the gloom of the 1990s. But while conditions in the "Venice of the north" are getting better, they are still a long way from its imperial heyday. There is not much you can do at 11pm, other than trudge back home through beautiful but eerily empty streets.<P>For more than a decade Valery Gergiev, the energetic artistic director of the Marinsky theatre and the festival alike, has been building an international reputation for himself and his Kirov ballet and opera company, while continuing to give back much to his adopted home-town. During the interval in a performance of Rimsky-Korsakov's The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh, he says it was time to do an exclusively Russian programme, including some more challenging and less well-known works.<P><A HREF="http://search.ft.com/search/article.html?id=020619002282&query=ballet&vsc_appId=totalSearch&state=Form" TARGET=_blank><B>click for more</B></A>

This round-up article concentrates almost entirely on opera (sigh...), but ballet gets a mention here and there.<P><B>mariinsky fest a traditional treat</B> <BR>by Gyulyara Sadykh-zade for THE ST. PETERSBURG TIMES<P><BR>On June 23, the now-traditional Baltika Awards were handed out, as part of the festival's sponsorship by the local brewery of the same name that has long been one of the theater's partners.<P>There are separate prizes for established and younger performers. The main prize - "for many years of creative participation in the festival" - went to the astonishing pianist Alexander Toradze, a longtime close friend of Gergiev's, with whom he regularly perform's Prokofiev's piano concertos. This year's prizes for high achievement in opera went to Gennady Bezzubenkov, one of the Mariinsky's most seasoned basses, who this season sang Don Alfonso in "Cosi fan tutte" and Pimen in "Boris Godunov;" and, in ballet, to Zhanna Ayupova. Mikhail Shemyakin took the award for best original work, for his staging of "The Nutcracker."<P><A HREF="http://www.sptimes.ru/archive/times/783/features/a_6827.htm" TARGET=_blank><B>click for more</B></A>