In the frame of Sió Cinema's Cultural Season Autumn 2014, the second opera in cinema is Lev Tolstoy's War and Peace adapted to the opera stage.
A spectacular new production of Prokofiev's epic opera, live from the recently opened Mariinsky II.
On Count Rostov's country estate in 1806, young Natasha (Aida Garifullina) falls for dashing Prince Andrei (Andrei Bondarenko). But his father disapproves of their proposed union and she subsequently elopes with Anatole Kuragin, who neglects to reveal that he is already married. Meanwhile, Napoleon's army is closing in on Russia, making war inevitable. Prokofiev spent the last years of his life preoccupied with what he rightly considered to be his masterpiece, which brings an intimate human scale to Tolstoy's great novel. This ambitious new production by innovative British director Graham Vick boasts set design by Paul Brown. It is premiered at the brand new Mariinsky II as part of the annual Stars of the White Nights Festival in Saint Petersburg. The conductor is the Mariinsky's internationally acclaimed artistic director, Valery Gergiev.
