Programme

Opera

13.06 fr
20:00

Hændel. A Dedication Ceremony to George Frideric Handel

House of Music (Shpagin Factory, Building A)

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14.06 sa
20:00

Hændel. A Dedication Ceremony to George Frideric Handel

House of Music (Shpagin Factory, Building A)

all tickets sold out

15.06 su
20:00

Camille Saint-Saëns. Samson and Delilah (Premiere)

Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre

all tickets sold out

16.06 mo
19:00

Camille Saint-Saëns. Samson and Delilah (Premiere)

Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre

all tickets sold out

House of Music (Shpagin Factory, Building A)

Opening concert of the festival

Performers:
musicAeterna orchestra and choir
musicAeterna Dance company
artists from the Anton Rubinstein Academy

12+

Opening the 2025 Diaghilev Festival on June 13, Hændel is a theatrical and musical dedication to the great composer on the 340th anniversary of his birth. Performed by the festival’s headliners — the musicAeterna orchestra and choir under the direction of Teodor Currentzis — the concert presents a pasticcio: a collage of arias, ensembles, orchestral and choral scenes from Handel’s operas and oratorios.

A pasticcio (Italian for “pie” or “mash-up”) was a popular 18th-century stage practice — an artfully crafted mix of musical pieces, often from different works, assembled into a new dramatic whole. In Hændel, this form brings together excerpts from Handel’s powerful Old Testament oratorios, dramatic arias from his Italian operas (Rinaldo, Giulio Cesare in Egitto, Orlando, Teseo), and dazzling instrumental pieces.

All music will be performed on period instruments and in historical baroque tuning by musicAeterna artists, known for their thoughtful and detailed work with historically informed performance and their pursuit of authentic sound. The semi-staged format and collage-like nature of the production follow the spirit of baroque spectacle — full of illusion, shifting perspectives, scale play, and a deep focus on the voice and space.

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House of Music (Shpagin Factory, Building A)

Opening concert of the festival

Performers:
musicAeterna orchestra and choir
musicAeterna Dance company
artists from the Anton Rubinstein Academy

12+

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Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre

Premiere

Music Director and Conductor: Vladimir Tkachenko
Stage Director: Anna Guseva
Coproduction of Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre and Diaghilev Festival

Cast:
Artists of the Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre
Guest soloists
Artists of the Evgeny Panfilov Ballet

16+

Samson and Delilah (1877) is a masterpiece of French musical theatre and a pinnacle of Camille Saint-Saëns’s (1835–1921) career. The opera tells the biblical story of the legendary hero Samson and the cunning seductress Delilah, who deceitfully uncovers the secret of his supernatural strength. Merging the grandeur of the Old Testament with the sensual intensity of the music, Saint-Saëns emerges in Samson and Delilah as the heir to the tradition of 18th-century French lyric tragedy. It is no coincidence that librettist Ferdinand Lemaire decided to base on a text by Voltaire, originally written in 1734 for Jean-Philippe Rameau’s opera Samson. A gem of the global opera repertoire, Samson and Delilah is a rare guest on Russian stages: the Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre and the Diaghilev Festival present the first Russian production of this Saint-Saëns opera in recent years.

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Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre

Premiere

Music Director and Conductor: Vladimir Tkachenko
Stage Director: Anna Guseva
Coproduction of Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre and Diaghilev Festival

Cast:
Artists of the Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre
Guest soloists
Artists of the Evgeny Panfilov Ballet

16+

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19.06 th
19:00

The Threepenny Opera (Premiere)

Soldatov Culture Palace

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20.06 fr
19:00

The Threepenny Opera (Premiere)

Soldatov Culture Palace

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Soldatov Culture Palace

Playwright Bertolt Brecht
Composer Kurt Weill
Director Nina Vorobyeva
Set Designer Asya Mukhina
Lighting Designer Ruslan Mayorov
Choreographer Anna Garafeeva
Conductor Ilya Gaisin

Performers:
Guest artists
musicAeterna Orchestra and Choir

16+

To be honest, this story can only truly be told with jazz. It is poetic from beginning to end. It starts in cigar smoke, to the sound of laughter, and ends in death.

— Bertolt Brecht

Macheath, a bandit nicknamed "The Knife," whose status in the criminal world is similar to that of the Godfather, decides to go legal and become a respectable member of society. To do so, he marries a bride who seemed suitable to him. However, his newly acquired father-in-law not only sends him to prison, but also leads him to the gallows.

Or:

Macheath, a bandit nicknamed "The Knife," with the temperament and charm of Don Juan and as many wives as Bluebeard, has finally found true love — but because of the betrayal of a jealous lover, with whom he still has ties, he ends up on the scaffold.

Or:

Jonathan Jeremiah Peachum, the king of the beggars, wants to marry off his daughter to save himself from ruin — but finds out she has already secretly married a bandit. Now, to save the family, he must go to extremes, even if it means sacrificing his daughter's happiness.

Today, this is not just a story about bandits. It is a full-fledged myth, equal to the timeless plots of Shakespeare and Sophocles, and the world of London’s criminal underworld is merely the setting where the story unfolds. The creators and the audience inevitably sympathize with each character in the play, constantly shifting their perspective. The sweet, refined, and fierce music of Kurt Weill — his deconstructed cabaret — gives the story the feeling of a mad celebration, a feast during the plague.

The new production of The Threepenny Opera will be a kind of mirror reflection of the opening of the Diaghilev Festival — a concert-performance of opera and oratorio arias by George Frideric Handel. Almost a hundred years ago, in 1928, Brecht and Weill based their show on the legendary English Beggar’s Opera, which was created a century earlier, in 1727, as a parody of Handel’s operas.

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Soldatov Culture Palace

Playwright Bertolt Brecht
Composer Kurt Weill
Director Nina Vorobyeva
Set Designer Asya Mukhina
Lighting Designer Ruslan Mayorov
Choreographer Anna Garafeeva
Conductor Ilya Gaisin

Performers:
Guest artists
musicAeterna Orchestra and Choir

16+

To be honest, this story can only truly be told with jazz. It is poetic from beginning to end. It starts in cigar smoke, to the sound of laughter, and ends in death.

— Bertolt Brecht

Or:

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Performance

15.06 su

“Marina Tsvetaeva’s Evening Gathering”

House of Music (Shpagin Factory, Building A)

all tickets sold out

18.06 we
19:00

Shame

Perm Academic Theatre-Theatre

all tickets sold out

19.06 th
18:00

William Shakespeare. King Lear

Stage Molot

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19.06 th
23:30

Macbeth on foreign land

House of Music (Shpagin Factory, Building A)

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House of Music (Shpagin Factory, Building A)

a cross-genre performance

Director: Elizaveta Moroz
Conductor: Evgeny Vorobyov
Set design: Sergey Kretenchuk
Lighting design: Alexander Romanov
Video art: Maria Varakhalina
Costumes: Elizaveta Moroz and Sergey Kretenchuk

Featuring:
Soloists of the musicAeterna choir and orchestra
musicAeterna Сhoir
Yanina Lakoba, actress

16+

“Marina Tsvetaeva’s Evening Gathering” is a special project by musicAeterna and Dom Radio, where contemporary academic music and sound art meet poetry and drama. The performance is built around premieres of new musical works based on Marina Tsvetaeva’s poetry, composed by Dom Radio’s resident composers: Andreas Mustukis, Alexey Syumak, Yegor Ananko, Viktoriya Kharkevich, Kirill Arkhipov, as well as Vangelino and Teodor Currentzis. These pieces, written for unusual vocal and instrumental combinations, are woven into a dramatic monologue.

Poems, letters, and diary excerpts by Tsvetaeva are performed by theater and film actress Yanina Lakoba, creating a confessional narrative of life and love from the perspective of a tragic poet. Soloists and a chamber ensemble of the musicAeterna choir, under the baton of Evgeny Vorobyov, act as “sympathetic strings” in the performance — responding to the drama, resonating with it, and provoking its further development.

The production was directed by Elizaveta Moroz, head of the new theatrical platform “Atheatron” at Dom Radio: “The scale of Marina Tsvetaeva’s personality and creativity is immense. She is a true genius whose work cannot be confined to conventional forms. In this project, we explore the boundary between reality and the subconscious world of her lyrical heroine — a figure who splits, multiplies, merges, and drifts apart. She arrives at a meeting where no one expects her, where no one wants to listen. She’s an antagonist, a provocateur in relation to both the audience and the musicians. This heroine is constantly searching for a place of peace — in a world where there is no place for her, both literally and figuratively.”

This production continues a series of musicAeterna’s tributes to major poets and composers, launched in 2020. Previous performances in the series — presented at the Diaghilev Festival — have honored Paul Celan, Charles Baudelaire, and Kurt Weill.

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Perm Academic Theatre-Theatre

Concept, director, and choreographer — Anastasia Peshkova
Set designer — Yulia Orlova
Composer — Kirill Arkhipov
Sound-artist - Andrey Vorobyov
Lighting designer — Kseniya Koteneva
Lighting technical designer - Natalya Tuzova
Sound engineer — Denis Odum
Playwright — Olga Potapova
Technical director — Alexey Bondarenko
Executive producer — Daria Tretyakova

Performers:
Daria Pavlenko, prima ballerina
Olga Komok — vocals, hurdy-gurdy, organetto
Aisylu Mirkhafizkhan — vocals

Dance company: musicAeterna Dance
Aigul Buzaeva
Timur Ganeev
Evgeny Kalachyov
Maxim Klochnyev
Savva Korotych
Elena Lisnaya
Aisylu Mirkhafizkhan
Alexey Slutsky
Daria Tagiltseva

12+

Shame is a dance-based exploration of one of the most painful and complex emotions in human experience. This is a wordless conversation — a physical language that gently opens up the nature of shame as a social, personal, and physical feeling.
Prima ballerina Daria Pavlenko’s character goes on an existential journey through encounters with shame. Society imposes this emotion on her from the outside, while her own actions bring it as an inner torment.

In Anastasia Peshkova’s new choreography, every viewer becomes both witness and judge, observer and observed. Watching over the performers is another silent presence — history itself. The creators take a step back from modern-day concerns and look at shame through the lens of time. Composer Kirill Arkhipov weaves 13th-century Spanish ballads (Cantigas de Santa Maria) into his electronic score, while the cycle of shame-filled stories spins like the wheel of the hurdy-gurdy — a medieval instrument known for its tense, resonant sound.

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Stage Molot

Drama performance

Russian translation by Boris Pasternak
Directed and designed by Denis Bokuradze
Costume designer — Elena Solovyova
Lighting designer — Evgeny Gansburg
Composer — Arseny Plaksin
Body plasticity director — Pavel Samokhvalov

Cast:
Lear, King of Britain — Denis Evnevich
Regan (Lear’s daughter), Fool — Yulia Bokuradze
Goneril (Lear’s daughter) — Elena Golikova
Cordelia (Lear’s daughter), Oswald (Goneril’s steward) — Vera Fedotova
Edmund (Gloucester’s illegitimate son), Earl of Kent — Arseny Shakirov
Edgar (Gloucester’s son), Duke of Cornwall, King of France, Courtier — Kirill Sterlikov
Earl of Gloucester, Duke of Albany, Duke of Burgundy, Curan (courtier) — Maksim Tsygankov

Premiered: December 10, 2016
Revival premiere: April 29, 2025

18+

“The Gran” Drama Theatre from Novokuybyshevsk returns to the Diaghilev Festival. “Gran” rose to nationwide fame in the 2010s when director Denis Bokuradze took the helm. His bold interpretations of classical works regularly made it into the long and short lists of the Golden Mask — Russia’s top theatre award — and earned multiple nominations and wins. Despite gaining official state status, the theatre has preserved its experimental spirit and studio energy.

This time, the troupe presents a revival of King Lear, which received four Golden Mask nominations in 2018 and won one. In his production, Denis Bokuradze closely follows Shakespeare’s plot but puts a strong focus on human relationships under the pressure of absolute power and control: “A state, the power to shape others’ fates, absolute belief in the rightness of one’s choices — even reckless ones — all of this was once in Lear’s hands. But it slips through his royal fingers, and the man who once ruled the world can no longer manage a simple meal. Lear embarks on a painful journey, accompanied by the Fool — the king’s second self, the one who tries to protect Lear from himself. But once Lear descends into madness, the Fool vanishes, because the king himself becomes the fool. Having lost everything — his mind, his home, his loyal followers, even his daughters — Lear begins to live a life he had never truly known. He begins to feel what it means to be human.”

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House of Music (Shpagin Factory, Building A)

An adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth
with the integration of original cinematic material.

Directed and Performed by Sofia Hill
Film Direction, Cinematography, Editing, Music Supervision: Angelos Hill
Costume Design: Hussein Chalayan, Loukia
Lighting Design: Kostas Bethanis
Sound Design: Vasilis Drougas

Running Time: 60 minutes

18+

The moral law within me
The starry sky above me.

Man, nature, and the echo of evil — these are main subjects in the new performance of Sophia Hill, the permanent co-author of the Greek director Theodoros Terzopoulos and the leading actress of the Attis Theatre in Delphi.

Macbeth wanders through foreign land — an inner exile where memory and morality give way to fear and thirst for power.
Man forever stands at the threshold: between the nature that gave him life and the nature that he threatens to destroy; between his inner morality and his thirst for dominance. His detachment from the moral and cosmic rhythm of nature is an act of hubris that inevitably leads to downfall.

In Macbeth, destructive rage reveals an inner fracture. Evil is not a law of nature but the result of a consciousness that refuses to accept the measure and frailty of mortal existence. The insatiable hunger for power, control, domination, knowledge, and immortality leads to alienation from the natural body — the body bound by time and memory. Will man merge with the machine? Will the post-human emerge — rootless, timeless, memoryless, bodiless — stripped of all tragedy?
Who will survive this struggle?
Nature is true time — eternal and indestructible.
Man is nothing but a fleeting deviation.

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Concert

14.06 sa
17:00

Varvara Myagkova: Schumann, Brahms, Medtner, Prokofiev, Scarlatti

The Great Hall of the Perm Philharmonic

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14.06 sa
23:00

Chamber Concert: Webern, Prokofiev, Cage, Bartók.

Private Philharmonic Triumph

all tickets sold out

15.06 su
17:00

Soloists of the musicAeterna Orchestra. Chamber Concert

Perm Philharmonic Organ Concert Hall

all tickets sold out

16.06 mo
23:00

Pyotr Glavatskikh: «The Arrival of the Ship»

The Great Hall of the Perm Philharmonic

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The Great Hall of the Perm Philharmonic

Robert Schumann (1810–1856)
Kreisleriana, Op. 16 (1838)

Johannes Brahms (1833–1897)
Theme and Variations in D minor, Op. 18b (1860)

Nikolai Medtner (1879–1951)
Three Fairy Tales for Piano, Op. 42 (1914)
Pieces No. 2 and No. 4 from Six Fairy Tales for Piano, Op. 51 (1928)
Pieces No. 3 and No. 1 from Four Fairy Tales for Piano, Op. 26 (1912)

Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953)
Sarcasms, Op. 17 (1914)

Domenico Scarlatti (1685–1757)
Selected keyboard sonatas

Varvara Myagkova returns to the Diaghilev Festival with a new solo program — a romantic collage that moves from Schumann’s Kreisleriana and Brahms’s Theme and Variations to the “Russian fairy tales” of Medtner. The program closes with a surprising contrast: Prokofiev’s sharp and witty miniatures in Sarcasms paired with elegant Baroque sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti.

The pianist’s goal is to uncover and highlight the visible and hidden connections between works from different styles and eras: “By bringing together pieces that seem so different and unrelated, I’ve not only shared my entire artistic experience, but also couldn’t ignore the voice that runs through them — a voice that is passionate, engaged, and full of selfless devotion. I want to rediscover these works as if they were freshly written today. We are not just inheritors of these notes. They live within us from the moment they were created to this very moment.”

Varvara Myagkova rose to fame thanks to the spread of her recordings and interviews on social media. Since 2019, the solo career of this Moscow Conservatory graduate — who spent many years working with a children’s choir — has taken off rapidly. Today, she performs in top concert halls and at major music festivals across Russia. Her repertoire is vast, ranging from Bach to contemporary composers writing in the style of “new simplicity,” some of whom have written pieces especially for her.

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Private Philharmonic Triumph

Performers:
Ivan Naborshchikov, violin
Yuri Panov, piano

Programme:

Anton Webern (1883–1945)
Four Pieces for Violin and Piano, Op. 7 (1910 / 1914)
Sehr langsam
Rasch
Sehr langsam
Bewegt

Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953)
Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 1 in F minor, Op. 80 (1938–1946)
Andante assai
Allegro brusco
Andante
Allegrissimo

John Cage (1912–1992)
Nocturne for Violin and Piano, JC. 93 (1947)

Béla Bartók (1881–1945)
Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 1 in C-sharp minor, BB. 84 (1921)
Allegro appassionato
Adagio
Allegro molto

18+

Ivan Naborshchikov — one of the most remarkable violinists and composers of his generation, a prizewinner of international competitions and an active performer across Russia and Europe — presents a new chamber program together with pianist Yuri Panov. The concert features works composed in the first half of the 20th century. Two major sonatas — Prokofiev’s epic First Sonata for Violin and Piano and Bartók’s First Sonata, rooted in neo-folklore and rich in experiments with atonality — are juxtaposed with Webern’s pointillist and abstract Four Pieces and Cage’s early, impressionistic Nocturne.

Ivan Naborshchikov explains the concept behind the program:
"For me, the most important idea is the image of the night and the sensations, phenomena, thoughts, and actions associated with it — all of which can be found in each piece of this program. I envision the concert as a single statement, with no applause between the works."

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Perm Philharmonic Organ Concert Hall

Performers:
Dmitry Borodin, violin
Andrey Roszyk, violin
Dinara Muratova, viola
Vladimir Slovachevsky, cello
Andrey Baranenko, piano

Programme:

Maurice Ravel (1875–1937)
Piano Trio in A minor, M. 67 (1914)
Modéré
Pantoum: Assez vif
Passacaille: Très large
Finale: Animé

Marko Nikodijević (b. 1980)
String Quartet No. 2 (2019)
Introduzione
Ruvido e animato
Tango. Oscuro e minaccioso
Vivace
Adagio mesto

Intermission

Marko Nikodijević
Prelazak preko noćnog plavetnila / “Crossing the Night Blue”
for piano quintet (2020)

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975)
Piano Quintet in G minor, Op. 57 (1940)
Prelude: Lento – Poco più mosso – Lento
Fugue: Adagio
Scherzo: Allegretto
Intermezzo: Lento
Finale: Allegretto

The soloists of the musicAeterna orchestra present a new chamber music program featuring works by Maurice Ravel, Dmitri Shostakovich, and the prominent contemporary Serbian composer Marko Nikodijević.

The concert is built on the principle of growing musical texture and density — from trio to piano quintet. It opens with Ravel’s Piano Trio, a virtuosic cycle, a brilliant example of mature composer’s style. The music blends Basque rhythms unfamiliar to the Western ear with exotic structures inspired by Malay poetry, combining sharp instrumental clarity with deep emotional resonance. This performance also celebrates the 150th anniversary of Ravel’s birth.

The program concludes with Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet, a work that was met with great acclaim at its 1940 premiere. It mixes Bach-like polyphony with folk-style melodies reminiscent of Mussorgsky’s operatic language. The lyrical and dramatic elements are seamlessly fused, while the dark, aggressive undertones so common in Shostakovich’s music are almost absent. Musicologist Levon Akopyan quotes British critic Gerald Abraham’s description of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony, which fits the quintet as well: “This is Shostakovich after the devils have been driven out.”

Between these two 20th-century chamber classics are two works by our contemporary, Marko Nikodijević: the String Quartet No. 2 and a poetic piece for the piano quintet titled Crossing the Night Blue. Nikodijević’s music — energetic, vivid, and often influenced either by historical traditions or techno-inspired sounds — is well known to the audience of the Diaghilev Festival.

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The Great Hall of the Perm Philharmonic

A musical fantasy inspired by the writings of Khalil Gibran

Idea by Pyotr Glavatskikh
Directed by Vasily Pospelov
Lighting design by Nikita Chernousov

Performers:
Pyotr Glavatskikh – percussion
Shriya Saran (India) – narration and dance
Hindustani Ensemble
Weinberg String Quintet

On the programme:

Grigoriy Smirnov (1982)
Mirrors of Emptiness for marimba and delay effect (2008)

Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882–1927)
Suite from the music for the play Shakuntala, arrangement for string quintet by Vladimir Pol (1914)

Pyotr Glavatskikh (b. 1979)
Dedication to Khalil Gibran for solo percussion

Traditional Hindustani music
Traditional Kathak dance
Reading

16+

The Arrival of the Ship is a project by Pyotr Glavatskikh — a regular participant of the Diaghilev Festival, Moscow-based multipercussionist, composer, and producer. It is a musical homage to the Lebanese writer Khalil Gibran and his book The Prophet, written as a collection of philosophical prose poems. At the heart of the parable lies the idea of the fundamental unity of religions. Pyotr Glavatskikh’s project is also based on unification — not of faiths, but of cultural traditions and musical worlds.

Bollywood actress Shriya Saran dances in the traditional Indian Kathak style and reads excerpts from Khalil Gibran’s book in English. Ildar Khabibullin, soloist of the Hindustani Ensemble and a master of traditional Indian vocal music, performs and reads the Russian translation.

In dialogue with the classical North Indian Hindustani tradition are works by the legendary philosopher and musician Hazrat Inayat Khan. In 1913, he lived in Moscow for seven months, performing Indian classical music and spreading his original philosophical ideas. Russian musicians helped him publish the collection Songs of Hindustani, which included Indian melodies arranged for piano. Some of them, in arrangements for string quintet, became part of the mystery ballet Shakuntala, staged by Alexander Tairov in 1914. Alongside fragments from this ballet, the program includes Grigory Smirnov’s Mirrors of Emptiness and a new percussion piece by Pyotr Glavatskikh inspired by Gibran’s writings.

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17.06 tu
18:00

musicAeterna Brass: Bach and Jazz

Great Hall of the Perm Philharmonic

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17.06 tu
21:00

Chamber concert МCME

Perm Philharmonic Organ Concert Hall

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20.06 fr
23:30

Naseer Shamma. Ethnic Music Concert

Diaghilev House

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22.06 su
15:00

Esperia

House of Music (Shpagin Factory, Building A)

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Great Hall of the Perm Philharmonic

Concert

Program:
Works by J.S. Bach and jazz compositions

Bach and jazz — a well-known pairing. Many classical and jazz musicians have explored the mix of these two styles, combining them in concerts or even within a single piece. The secret of this crossover’s success lies in the balance between improvisation and structure — a shared feature of both baroque and jazz music.

The new brass ensemble of the musicAeterna family, led by trumpeter Pavel Kurdakov, will perform Bach and jazz — but without blending the styles. The first half of the concert will feature classical arrangements of Bach’s music: from chorale preludes and cantata arias to famous organ pieces and instrumental suite excerpts. The second half will be dedicated to jazz standards in different styles, arranged specially for the ensemble.

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Perm Philharmonic Organ Concert Hall

Performers:
Konstantin Efimov, flute
Oleg Tantsov, clarinet
Mikhail Dubov, piano
Evsevy Zubkov, percussion
Evgeny Subbotin, violin
Olga Demina, cello

Programme:

Georges Aperghis (b. 1945)
Graffitis for solo percussionist (1980)

George Crumb (1929–2022)
Eleven Echoes of Autumn for flute, clarinet, violin, and piano (1966)

Frederic Rzewski (1938–2021)
Pocket Symphony for flute, clarinet, piano, percussion, violin, and cello (1999–2000). Russian premiere

12+

MCME — the Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble — is a regular participant of the Diaghilev Festival. Founded in 1990 as an independent professional group, it was the first Russian ensemble devoted exclusively to promoting 20th- and 21st-century music and supporting living composers. The ensemble has premiered over a thousand Russian and world works, led major educational projects, released more than 50 albums, and received prestigious awards.

In this new program, MCME performs works by three iconic figures of the Western avant-garde, all linked by the spirit of instrumental theatre — where the process of creating music becomes a spectacle.

French composer of Greek descent Georges Aperghis is best known for his large-scale music theatre works. His concert piece Graffitis is essentially a one-man theatre: the percussionist plays and simultaneously delivers an emotionally charged text in which microfragments from Goethe’s Faust disintegrate into syllables, blurring the line between speech and musical sound.

In Eleven Echoes of Autumn, American avant-gardist and instrumental theatre pioneer George Crumb explores new timbral possibilities of flute, clarinet, violin, and piano. The result is a kind of “sound-theatre” where the protagonists are the mesmerizing and eerie sounds conjured from classical instruments.

American composer Frederic Rzewski departs from his usual political and social themes in Pocket Symphony, instead creating a purely musical “theatre of styles” — a witty, almost comedic play with stylistic and linguistic patterns drawn from both European classical and non-classical music traditions.

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Diaghilev House

Naseer Shamma – Arabic Oud

Duration: 1 hour 30 minutes, no intermission

16+

The main figure of the ethnic music concert at the Diaghilev Festival 2025 will be Naseer Shamma — a brilliant master of the classical Arabic oud. One of the most renowned solo oud performers in the world, Shamma was born, educated, and became famous in Iraq, but has long been a true "citizen of the world." He freely crosses borders — both geographical and stylistic.

In his compositions, Shamma brings together classical Arabic traditions with the harmonies and rhythms of Spanish folk music and European classical music. His poetic pieces, often inspired by Sufi ideas, are full of thematic contrasts and incredible virtuosity. Expanding the technical possibilities of the oud, he has developed a new type of instrument with additional strings.

Naseer Shamma actively performs around the world — in major concert halls across Asia, Europe, and North America — both solo and with various ensembles, from small groups to full-scale Arabic orchestras. He has received more than 70 prestigious awards. In 1999, he founded the Bayt al-Oud al-Arabi ("House of Arabic Oud") in Cairo — the first school fully dedicated to the oud as a solo instrument. Today, the school has branches in Abu Dhabi, Alexandria, Baghdad, Khartoum, Riyadh, and Mosul.

Shamma is also deeply involved in humanitarian work. He is a UNESCO Artist for Peace, a Goodwill Ambassador for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, and, since 2023, a WHO Health Champion.

At Diaghilev House, Naseer Shamma will perform his own compositions: A World without Fear, Ishraq, From Assyria to Seville, Departing Moon (also known as The Moon Fades), and Garcia Lorca.

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House of Music (Shpagin Factory, Building A)

Concert-Performance

Musical Director and Conductor: Teodor Currentzis
Director: Anna Guseva
Chief Choirmaster: Vitaly Polonsky
Choreographer: Anastasia Peshkova

Performers:
musicAeterna Choir
soloists of the musicAeterna Orchestra
musicAeterna Dance company

18+

The concert-performance Esperia, featuring the musicAeterna choir, orchestra soloists, and dance company under the direction of Teodor Currentzis, continues a long-standing tradition of the Diaghilev Festival: the program will remain a mystery until the end of the evening.

This concept of “pure perception” — where the audience experiences the performance without prior knowledge — is especially important for this piece. Esperia is a kind of modern mystery play, touching the deepest human emotions and hopes through sacred music from different styles and eras, subtle choreography, and carefully crafted lighting.

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22.06 su
22:00

Esperia

House of Music (Shpagin Factory, Building A)

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House of Music (Shpagin Factory, Building A)

Concert-Performance

Musical Director and Conductor: Teodor Currentzis
Director: Anna Guseva
Chief Choirmaster: Vitaly Polonsky
Choreographer: Anastasia Peshkova

Performers:
musicAeterna Choir
soloists of the musicAeterna Orchestra
musicAeterna Dance company

18+

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