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By Matthew Westphal
25 Apr 2007

Scottish director David McVicar's staging of Benjamin Britten's The Turn of the Screw for St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Theater — the company's first production ever to be sung in English — has taken the Best Opera Production prize at Russia's Golden Mask Awards.

The Golden Mask Awards

The awards were presented at a ceremony in Moscow on April 14, at the close of the two-week Golden Mask Theater Festival. Each year the Golden Mask's Board of Experts selects various theater, opera, ballet, contemporary dance, operetta/musical theater and puppetry productions from throughout Russia and invites them to perform in the Golden Mask Festival in Moscow, where a special jury composed of actors, directors, conductors, choreographers, and designers selects award winners for performance, direction and design in each discipline.

The operatic Golden Masks split: while McVicar's Screw won for the best production overall, a staging of Mozart's Così fan tutte at Moscow's Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theatre took honors for best director (Alexander Titel), best conductor (Volf Gorelik) and best designer (Vladimir Arefiev). Soprano Tatiana Pechnikova took the operatic Best Actress award for her portrayal of Bellini's Norma at Moscow's Novaya Opera, while baritone Florian Boesch won Best Actor for his Papageno in the Bolshoi's Magic Flute.

A Cinderella from the Opera and Ballet Theater of Novosibirsk received the Best Ballet prize, but no production award was given at all in the contemporary dance category. The Bolshoi Ballet won best choreographer for The Card Game, while Best Actor and Actress honors in the dance category went to the Mariinsky.

A complete list of Golden Mask winners in the opera and dance categories is below. For more information about the festival and its awards, visit www.goldenmask.ru.

Opera - Best Production

• The Turn of the Screw
  Mariinsky Theatre, St. Petersburg

Opera - Best Conductor

• Volf Gorelik
  Così fan tutte, Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theatre, Moscow

Opera - Best Director

• Alexander Titel
  Così fan tutte, Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theatre, Moscow

Opera - Best Actress

• Tatiana Pechnikova
  Norma - Norma, Novaya Opera, Moscow

Opera - Best Actor

• Florian Boesch
  Papageno - The Magic Flute, Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow

Opera/Musical Theater - Best Designer

• Vladimir Arefiev
  Così fan tutte, Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theatre, Moscow

Ballet - Best Production

• Cinderella
  Opera and Ballet Theatre, Novosibirsk

Contemporary Dance - Best Production

• prize not awarded

Ballet/Contemporary Dance - Best Balletmaster/Best Choreographer

• Alexei Ratmansky
  The Card Game, Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow

Ballet/Contemporary Dance - Best Actress

• Yevgenia Obraztsova
  Undine - Undine, Mariinsky Theatre, St. Petersburg

Ballet/Contemporary Dance - Best Actor

• Andrei Ivanov
  Akakiy Akakievich - The Overcoat, Mariinsky Theatre, St. Petersburg

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