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.

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.

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.

“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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.