The Forest Song in Donetsk

The Solovianenko National Opera and Ballet Theater of Donetsk started working on a ballet based on Lesia Ukrainka’s title drama in verse in June this year. The choreographer and stage director, Yevhenia Khasianova, also acted as a costume designer. She found samples of folk attire characteristic of Volyn in that period, for this is the poem’s setting.

“Mykhailo Skorulsky ranks with Ukraine’s noted composers. Not coincidentally his compositions have been used by a number of ballet companies, including the Bolshoi in Moscow. The Forest Song has been on the Ukrainian National Opera’s repertoire for years on end. Our company has staged this beautiful ballet for the first time,” says the Donetsk Opera’s artistic director, Vadym Pysariev. This production cost the company 700,000 hryvnias. The cast, orchestra, and personnel total 250. Orchestra conductor Viktor Oliinyk notes that Skorulsky included in the score several folk spring carols recorded by Lesia Ukrainka: “Even Soviet critics wrote that Skorulsky’s music matches that of Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, and Stravinsky. The Forest Song has a number of solo lyrical scenes that help reveal the characters’ inner dramatic world. For the conductor and the orchestra this ballet score is an inexhaustible source of inspiration. It should also be performed during concert tours abroad.”

The Donetsk company plans tours with The Forest Song in the west of Ukraine, in commemoration of Lesia Ukrainka’s 140th anniversary, and they have been invited to stage it in Wroclaw (Poland) when launching Donetsk as a Euro-2012 host city.