“Yunona and Avos on ice”, a feast for the eyes

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On November 7th, St. Petersburg State Ice Theatre, directed by the Olympic champion Elena Berezhnaya, presented a marvel of a show, based on the famous Soviet rock opera “Yunona and Avos” (composer: Alexey Rybnikov, poetry by Andrei Voznesensky). There were practically no empty seats in the arena, to the delight of the entire cast of artists; among those, the ice dancers Naomi Lang and Peter Tchernyshev – two-time Four Continents champions – playing the roles of Conchita Arguello and Russian nobleman Nikolai Petrovich Rezanov. This is, of course, a love story – but a tragic one…

by Valentina Volchok

The libretto of “Yunona and Avos” is based on Andrei Voznesensky’s poem “Avos!” written in 1970 – and the poem is said to rely on the actual events of 1806, surrounding the love story between Nikolai Rezanov, a Russian nobleman, and Maria Concepción Argüello (Conchita, in the opera), the 16-year-old daughter of the Spanish governor of California. “Yunona” and “Avos” are the names of the two ships used by Rezanov to make an expedition from Alaska to (then Spanish) California; he needed food supplies for the starving Russian colonies.

During this particular expedition, Nikolai meets young Conchita and they fell in love; an engagement takes place but, in order to marry her, the nobleman has to return to the imperial palace in St. Petersburg, to get permission to marry a Catholic woman. The fate is cruel though: on the road back, Nikolai falls ill and dies. Conchita refuses to believe the tragic news and continues to wait for him all her life…

Performed by the St. Petersburg State Ice Theatre, “Yunona and Avos on ice” had everything: fantastic decorations, breathtaking special effects and the latest technology of 3D-mapping which allowed to project images on a variety of shapes and surfaces, recreating, in all forms and colors, authentic scenes of the Russian Empire, of the Spanish colonies at the beginning of the XIX century. Not to mention the participation of figure skating stars like Naomi Lang and Peter Tchernyshev. All in all, this was a masterpiece on ice and the pictures below do nothing but prove it: a magnificent evening in St. Petersburg…

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