The 2024-2025 season at the Mariinsky and Bolshoi Theatres, now both headed by director Valery Gergiev, began the first week in September. While the Bolshoi has already presented “The Sleeping Beauty” to start off its season, the Mariinsky audiences are awaiting the 17th of September when “Swan Lake” will be performed in traditional fashion as the first ballet for the new performing year.
In his Moscow press conference last week, Gergiev announced plans to bring some new ballets into the repertoire, naming those set to music by Stravinsky and Prokofiev. He alluded to “young talented choreographers” (we assume he refers to Alexander Sergeev, whose premiere of “Coppelia” for the Mariinsky took place 2 months ago), as capable of bringing some of the ballet scores into movement form. He specified “Scythian Suite” which would be a completely new work, alongside “Prodigal Son” (which used to run in the Balanchine version at the Mariinsky), and “Firebird” and Petrushka” (both of which are already in the Mariinsky repertoire). Hopefully the repertoires of the two largest theatres will not start to duplicate each other, but it sounds like he intends to bring the ballets that exist up north to Moscow. We shall wait and see.