MUSICAL THEATER
WINTERGREEN FOR PRESIDENT / George Gershvin
Stadttheater
Gießen,
Germany 2025
Musical director, conductor – Vladimir Yaskorsky
Stage director, set designer – Philipp Grigorian
Costume designer – Moritz Haakh
Choreographer – Anna Abalikhina
Dramaturgs – Ann-Christine Mecke, Tim Kahn
“Wintergreen for President!” has its sparkling German premiere.
Musical Today
Director and set designer Philipp Grigorian stages a dazzling political satire at the Stadttheater Gießen.
Die Deutsches Buhne
Director Philipp Grigorian uses the original to immediately pick up speed on the rotating revolving stage of the main house and infuse it with a Broadway flair.
Giessener Anzeiger
Director Philipp Grigorian has wrapped the original story in a dream setting, allowing him to delve into even more absurdities than the plot already allows.
Musicalzentrale
You can see an interdisciplinary show. Vocal soloists, choir, actors and a dancers join in. It gets loud and colourful. Mass scenes with entertainment value right at the beginning. Philipp Grigorian, who is responsible for the rotating stage design as well as directing, staged a laconic and gender-swapping ‘Xerxes’ by Handel at the theatre last season. Now the Russian is once again demonstrating his talent for sharp characters, controlled tumult, questions of detail and the joy of mischief.
Giessener Allgemeine
XERXES / George Handel
Stadttheater
Gießen,
Germany 2024
Musical director, conductor – Vladimir Yaskorsky
Stage director, set designer – Philipp Grigorian
Costume designer – Moritz Haakh
Dramaturgs – Ilya Kukharenko, Ann-Christine Mecke
Philipp Grigorian dares a lot with his production of Handel's ‘Xerxes’ in Giessen and wins in the end, Vladimir Yaskorski assists in the pit with a sense of proportion.
Opernwelt
The director is not interested in making political statements on migration policy, but rather in using the respective setting as a playground to create sparks with unerring humour. This concept works wonderfully well, not least because all the actors are in an infectious playful mood. The audience is treated to a very entertaining and, despite its three-hour duration, highly diverting evening.
Der opern freund
HERZOG BLAUBARTS BURG / Béla Bartók
Oper Wuppertal
Wuppertal,
Germany 2022
Musical director, conductor – Patrick Hahn
Stage director, set designer – Philipp Grigorian
Costume designer – Vlada Pomirkovanaya
Dramaturg – Ilya Kukharenko
Director Philipp Grigorian, who is also his own set designer, has built a hyper-realistic, musty green-grey room with twinkling living room lamps that refers to about the middle of the 20th century. Grigorian radically reinterprets the basic constellation of the characters, but without loss of substance: Bluebeard is here an old, terminally ill man and Judith not his new wife but his only daughter. He tells their gruelling encounter as a typical generational conflict of today's Russia, namely as a bitter dispute between parents who have also accumulated secrets with their wealth and their children who ask about the moral price of comfort.
Die Deutsche Bühne
In this way, Grigorian elegantly shifts the weights without lifting them. The compulsively erotic undertone that paints Judith (and her predecessors) as victims is thus reinterpreted, the secrets she wants to fathom Grigorian's trick can even leave as they are written. With every door that opens, riches, possessions and beauties are revealed, with blood on them. In addition to the two singing protagonists, Grigorian invents three predominantly silent roles, namely Bluebeard's wife, Judith's mother and Bluebeard's mother – a kind of oppressive family constellation, sparingly and impressively staged. In general, Grigorian's direction lives from concentration, reduction and high internal tension.
Die Deutsche Bühne
THE LOVE FOR THREE ORANGES / Sergey Prokofiev
Perm Opera and Ballet Theater
Perm,
Russia 2021
Conductor – Artyom Abashev
Stage director, set designer – Philipp Grigorian
Costume Designer – Vlada Pomirkovanaya
Choreographer – Anna Abalikhina
Dramaturg – Ilya Kukharenko
Golden Mask National Theatre Award laureate (nomination “Best costume design”)
The world of doppelgangers in which superheroes emerge, the multi-layered construction where some characters are played by others and embedded in the action "undercover" – all this gives opera to speak the language of streaming services and complex dramas, to explain works to an audience that has preferred theatre to binge-watching. Oranges will be seen more by those for whom opera is not their main leisure time; perhaps one of the best realisations of the "new Perm concept".
Afisha
The authors have filled the story with cultural parallels and perpendiculars, competing with the young composer in the drive.
Rossiyskaya Gazeta
"The director's proposed story allows the company of the Perm Opera
to showcase not only their excellent vocal abilities, but also their acting abilities." "In Perm's Love for Three Oranges, staged in the spirit of vintageretrofuturism, the delicate nerve endings are stitched together very carefully, and impulses are reliably transmitted – just enough time to read the fresh signals".
Kommersant
LA PERICHOLA / Jacques Offenbach
Bolshoi Ballet and Opera Theatre
Moscow,
Russia 2019
Stage director, set designer – Philipp Grigorian
Conductor – Philipp Chizhevsky
Costume Designer – Vlada Pomirkovanaya
Choreographer – Anna Abalikhina
Dramaturg – Ilya Kukharenko
Everything came together in the production – the playfulness of Offenbach's music, the grandiose new translation of the libretto into Russian by Zhenya Berkovich (it seems that everything has been "updated", but the original operetta has not been twisted anywhere), the stylish costumes by Vlada Pomirkovana, and the fantastic work with the orchestra by conductor Philipp Chizhevsky, who has easily given both the Spanish passion and the lyrical dramaticism. Magnificent and phonetically precise vocal work of the soloists. This performance is a celebration with tears in the eyes from laughter and a grimace of horror from recognition.
Your Leisure (Vash Dosug)
If you've been following the Moscow City Duma elections or watched the President's live broadcast, this is the play for you, and it's not "a fig in the pocket" (a sure sign of pettiness and bad taste), but good-natured tooting. But all (sic!) characters are relatable, even though the action takes place in 18th century Peruvian Lima, and not at all in 21st century Moscow, as would be thought by the libertines and oppositionists who skimped on the program.
Pravda.ru
"Our era," says the director in an interview, "is similar to Offenbach's era. Back then, the ladies of the semi-celebrity stood up for their rights. And today we are faced with a new wave of women's emancipation. It's very interesting. In our play Pericola is not deceiving the king. She really likes him. She doesn't want to choose between the king and Piquillo. She wants both. And she doesn't see why she should deny herself".
Playing from the beginning
SHINING / based on lyrics by Egor Letov
Chateau de Fantomas
Moscow,
Russia 2014
Idea, musical setting – Igor Vdovin
Stage director, set designer – Philipp Grigorian
Costume designer – Galya Solodovnikova,
Masha Kechayeva
Starring – Alisa Khazanova
In a cosy Chateau de Fantomas we feel the atmosphere of a German cabaret movie of Weimar Republic. The spirit is strikingly familiar. Tables with wine glasses, proximity to an artist – seductive woman wearing a sexy dress, underground poetry. Khazanova reads Letov’s lines underlining their illegal beauty and giving all it’s poignancy to the event. The “Shining” seems to combine the incompatible –
the atmosphere of a private Moscow club, the classic cabaret tradition and the inner energy of Siberian punk. We saw Egor Letov’s widow Natalia Chumakova applauding at the premiere. Then we can say that Philipp Grigorian has mastered the form.
Kommersant
Everyone wants his life to be beautiful even if we do not admit it. But sooner or later we see our dreams crushing. Sometimes it is extremely hard to say farewell to your fantasies but it is necessary.
Reality can look illicit opposed to sweet dreams, as do Egor Letov texts. But the truth is always there. This is the what the new production in Chateau de Fantomas is about.
Buro 24/7
MEDEAMATERIAL / Pascal Dusapin / Play by Heiner Muller
Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre
Perm,
Russia 2012
Presentation of this opera during the Diaghilev Festival 2012 was a Russian premiere of this partition and a first staging of Dusapin’s operas in Russia.
Permopera
Musical director, conductor – Teodor Currentzis
Stage director, set designer – Philipp Grigorian
Costume designer – Galya Solodovnikova
Choreographer – Anna Abalikhina
Golden Mask National Theatre Award laureate
(nomination “Best female role”)
FULL-MOON / Alexei Sysoev
TERRITORIЯ Festival
Moscow,
Russia 2011
Stage director, set designer – Philipp Grigorian
Costume and set designer – Galya Solodovnikova
Idea – Teodor Currentzis, Nikolai Dobrinov
Dance solo, choreographer – Taketeru Kudo / Japan
Full-moon is more than just a rare attempt to create an interdisciplinary performance on a Russian stage, a multifaceted show combining music, drama, contemporary dance and visual arts. For us it is a priceless experience of a radical reinterpretation of a traditional visual arts performance, a painful self-reflection and renewal of the familiar art form.
Kommersant.Weekend
This complex project was produced from start to finish by the Territory festival and is by and large one of the most obvious creative and cultural successes of the forum
in its seven years of existence.
Private Correspondent
Golden Mask National Theatre Award laureate
(nomination “Experiment”)
THE HUMAN VOICE
/ Opera by Francis Poulenc / Libretto – Jean Cocteau
Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre
Perm,
Russia 2011
Conductor – Olivier Cuendet
Stage director, set designer – Philipp Grigorian
Costume designer – Galya Solodovnikova
There is no dramatic action – but the audience can’t take their eyes off it from the beginning till the very end. There is no usual airs, duets or chorus parts – furthermore, there is only one singer – a female soprano, but this doesn’t make this opera less dramatic or even tragic.
musicseasons.org
“Human voice” (Perm, Russia) consists of two monologues of abandoned women. First is directed by Boris Milgram, second – by Philipp Grigorian who also staged the whole piece, presenting each part in a completely different way in attempt not to mash the audience by the humiliation of a female hysteria. The first part is about a profound unhappiness of a woman. The second is about a whimsical female character who lives in an imaginary Versailles-like world where the finely cut trees are buried under the empty cans and bottles, where the masculine statues come alive and hairy funny dogs wander around. Too funny for words. One should not take this female moaning too serious.
Colta.ru
