Commonwealth Lyric Theater Presents Boston Premiere of THE DEMON

Commonwealth Lyric Theater (winner of several National Opera Association Opera Awards, praised by The Boston Globe, WBUR, Boston Musical Intelligencer, and New York Arts Magazine) presents the Boston premiere of Anton Rubinstein's 19th-century Russian operatic masterpiece The Demon. Performances will take place on May 18th and 20th at 8pm in Emerson's Cutler Majestic Theatre (219 Tremont Street, Boston, MA). Tickets may be purchased through www.CommonwealthLyricTheater.com, or at the door pending availability.

About the Opera: Based on a famous poem by Mikhail Lermontov, The Demon is a romantic drama of the immortal Demon falling in love with a beautiful mortal girl in the mountains of Georgia. While wandering the earth, isolated and weary with the weight of immortality, Rubinstein's Demon meets the princess Tamara - a woman who overwhelms him with emotion. Although in his greedy passion, the Demon destroys her fiancé, Tamara feels compassion towards the Demon and his tortured spirit. They embrace, but alas, his kiss is fatal. Rubinstein, a teacher of Tchaikovsky, wrote twenty operas during his lifetime, toured the U.S. as a pianist under the auspices of Steinway & Sons, and founded the St. Petersburg Conservatory. His works remain a staple in standard Russian repertoire, although they are more rarely heard in the U.S.

About the Artists: Under the baton of renowned conductor Lidiya Yankovskaya, this production will feature a full live orchestra and great Russian-born soloists (Alexey Bogdanov and Zhanna Alkhazova). The production is fully staged and costumed, showcasing spectacular set and costume designs by Anastasia Grigoreva (Moscow) and video art by Patrick K.H (Vienna). It will also feature an authentic Georgian Dance Ensemble (PESVEBI) - with their notorious sword dancing - a chorus consisting of adults and children, and an all-Russian production staff, maintaining the company's connection to community.

Commonwealth Lyric Theater - led by award-winning Artistic and Stage Director Alexander Prokhorov - was formed just 7 years ago as a small community organization bringing together Boston's Russian diaspora through classic operatic works. This group of high-level professional artists has worked with community arts organizations to bring to Boston audiences quality productions of rarely performed gems of Russian and Slavic operatic repertoire. In recent seasons, Commonwealth Lyric Theater has presented fully staged productions of Tchaikovsky's Iolanta, Rachmaninoff's Aleko, Rimsky-Korsakov's Mozart and Salieri and Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov at Center Makor in Brighton and Newton City Hall. In 2016, the Boston Globe noted that CLT's production of Boris Godunov "delivered the jolt of real Russian opera steeped in an authentic tradition," and called the theater a "local opera company that tends to dream big and to exceed expectations." In 2017, with The Demon, CLT intends to do it again on a grander scale with performances at Boston's Cutler Majestic Theatre.

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