06/06/10 - Unique Exhibition of High Art - Music of Italy in Footlights

Дата публикации: Jan 19, 2012 1:12:39 PM

Music of Italy in Footlights, a music and art exhibition, is taking place in the Tashkent House of Photography, representing the retrospective review of the opera theater in Uzbekistan.

Numerous photographs, scenery sketches, costumes, playbills from the collection of Alisher Navoi State Academic Bolshoi Theater (SABT) display the history of staging operas by great Italian composers on the best stage of the country. It was started in the middle of the 20th century and continues its triumphal activity in our days. The opening ceremony of the exhibition was enriched with the concert by Navoi SABT soloists and demonstration of the video films of famous Italian operas. One of the halls attracts fine arts’ amateurs with painting exposition by the graduates of the Aldo Galli Italian Academy of Fine Arts in Como city Kamoljon Boboyev and Eshmamat Khayitov. The exhibition has become another example of the developing cultural ties between Uzbekistan and Italy. “I am impressed by the concert and highest mastery of Uzbek performers: vocalists and their accompanist. These music parties became a synonym of an elated mood. They are very close for art amateurs, and I sang along wit them with pleasure,” Antonietta Gobbis, teacher of Italian language and culture at the Uzbek State World Languages University, shares her impressions. “I liked the exposition very much, and particularly the pictorial canvases. They present an interesting view of sightseeing and nature of Italy. You can see how well the Uzbek artists felt the spirit of my country, how subtly they could transmit their state of mind and impressions of Italy,” added her companion Marco Paoli Legler.

It is worth to mention the success of the International Italian Opera Week that took place in Tashkent in the beginning of May with participation of Italian, Byelorussian and Uzbek masters. Today Alisher Navoi SABT is the leading theater in Uzbekistan, its national pride, the center of attraction for music and theater culture. The theater absorbed the whole diversity of national and world classic heritage and created the unique models of the Uzbek music and drama art. It addresses to Italian operas according to an old and good tradition. The first similar performances were staged in 50s of the last century. They included La Traviata (1954, 1956), Madame Butterfly, Clowns (1959), Aida, Seville Barber (1960), and others. Wonderful soloists, People’s Artists Saodat Kabulova, Rozalinda Laut, Vyacheslav Grinchenko, Samson Beniaminov, Honored Artists of Uzbekistan Oynisa and Rafaat Kuchlikovs, Asad Azimov, Robert Borukhv and many others acted as leading artists there. Their photo portraits are presented in the current exhibition. It is impossible to imagine the performances without decorative compositions by famous Uzbek scenery designers M. Musaev, M. Gvozdikov, Sh. Shorakhimov, F. Fesko, Z. Kurysh, V. Ryftin, G. Brim, M. Novikovsky and others. Their works are still used in the staging.

Having overstepped to the new century, Alisher Navoi SABT enriches its repertory with new operas by national and foreign composers and addresses the Italian opera more often. Such operas as Lucia di Lammermoor, Love Potion, Bohemia, Traviata, and Rigoletto were staged in the original language with the assistance of the Embassy of Italy in Uzbekistan. Today the theater repertoire numbers 15 Italian operas that take a worthy place in the playbill.