The St. Petersburg Embankments Festival started in the Presidential Library with the opening of “Music of the Sea” performance dedicated to the 200th anniversary of Ivan Aivazovsky

Official opening of the Petersburg Embankments VII International Music Festival took place on October 6, 2017, in the Presidential Library. The first festival concert dedicated to the bicentenary of Ivan Aivazovsky entitled “Music of the Sea” purely overwhelmed listeners with a unique synergy of displayed paintings of the great artist and the beautiful music.

The works of the greatest Russian and foreign maritime composers were performed against the backdrop of the video series of Ivan Aivazovsky's well and relatively unknown masterpieces. A complete immersion in the atmosphere of the artist's work materialized within a framework of the joint project of the Petersburg Embankments Festival, the Presidential Library and the State Russian Museum.

How did the artist manage it to link Armenia, Italy and Russia; what is the real Ivan Aivazovsky’s name; who was he — a student of the Imperial Academy of Arts — an inventor of a new trend in painting or a lead statesman? The experts on the work of Aivazovsky from the State Russian Museum answered all these these questions.

Aivazovsky’s life was closely linked with Russia, Italy and Armenia. The gala night program included Neapolitan canzones associated with marine themes, performed by the brilliant Italian lyric-dramatic tenor Dario Di Vietri, who learned his vocal expertise from Luciano Pavarotti. His voice astounds with its depth and strength. The prima donna of the Mariinsky Theater Oksana Shilova and a soloist of the National Academic Opera and Ballet Theater named after A. Spendiaryan Hovhannes Nersesyan (Armenia) gifted with so beautiful spiritually driven voice performed the arias from the operas of Rimsky-Korsakov.

On top of everything, the concert featured music of the maritime composer, the founder of musical impressionism Claude Debussy, as well as Dvořák and Leoncavallo, performed by the “Tavricheskiy” International Symphonic Orchestra, conducted by Mikhail Golikov.

The descendants of the artist have visited the concert dedicated to the 200th anniversary of Aivazovsky.

The Petersburg Embankments Festival will run until December 1, 2017. Its official closing ceremony will take place in the State Hermitage.