May night, or Night in a Museum

May night, or Night in a Museum event at the Tsar’s Courtyard in Izmailovo

The Moscow State Integrated Museum-Reserve continues to organize concerts in the open air. 21 May 2011, episodes from the May Night opera by Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov were performed at the caré of the Tsar’s Courtyard in Izmailovo.

Opera Empire, the first open air opera festival in Russia, and Concerts for Ex-Servicemen revived after an almost 100-year-old break – these are just examples of numerous projects carried out by the museum on the Izmailovsky Island which has lately become an island of music.

This year, the listeners could enjoy one of Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov’s masterpieces, the May Night opera (1879), written after Nikolay Gogol’s novel.

The general atmosphere of the opera, the colourful and poetic language of Nikolay Gogol’s novel skillfully rendered into music language by Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov invite altogether to play this opera in the open air, in the historic landscape of the Izmailovsky Island.

Episodes from the May Night opera were performed by soloists and orchestra of Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Academic Music Theatre.