Persephone. Before. Audio performance-promenade

Audio performance-promenade "Persephone. Before" is a curtain-raiser of the main event of the festival, the premiere of the stage version of Igor Stravinsky's "Persephone" and "Symphony of Psalms" performed by musicAeterna under the direction of Teodor Currentzis.

The project starts with the opening of the festival and will last 9 days. Director Evgeny Malenchev and playwright Ekaterina Avgustenyak will send the participants of their site-specific project on a journey to places that are normally closed to public. The audio performances will take place in Zakamsk: the Perm Shipyard backwater, famed in photo reports and films, will become the place of an impressive journey into the ancient myth of the eternal cycle of life and death, which takes on a new meaning in the landscape of today. Dying ships, living out their last days in the midst of blooming nature – these industrial monsters that once conquered the Kama, and now drowning in its embrace – will serve as "sacred objects" on this journey..

The audio performance is based on conversations, interviews, and memoirs of Igor Stravinsky, one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, who largely defined the "musical face" of his age. Like Eumolpus, who expounds the content of the myth in the melodrama "Persephone", the main character of the project "Persephone. Before" will be Stravinsky himself. His meeting with Diaghilev and their quarrels, the idea and history of the creation of "Persephone", "the tragic in exile", and other vital issues will form the basis of an audio mystery in which, despite its powerful informativity, feelings will be more important than words, and the dialogue with the composer will turn into a dialogue with myth and nature.