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Sale of tickets begins for the evening performances of the Flora project in the Hermitage

Published 14 July 2021

From 1 July 2021. it is possible to buy tickets on the State Hermitage website for the evening performances of the Flora theatrical-musical project.

The main idea of the project is to combine different art forms within the museum. Primarily figurative art and literature, then music, dance and acting. Invited literary figures and musicians from Austria, Russia, Germany, the UK, the USA, Belarus and other countries have produced their own texts and compositions inspired by works in the Hermitage. The participants in the project include the contemporary Russian writers Olga Sedakova, Tatyana Tolstaya and Yevgeny Vodolazkin.

On the basis of the resulting musical and literary works, the director Jacqueline Kornmüller and a team of 14 actors, dancers and performers will create a series of scenes that will enable people to take a fresh look at famous Hermitage masterpieces. The producer of the project is the actor and dramatist Peter Wolff.

The scenes will take place in the museum halls in front of the artworks. As a result, the audience, immersing themselves in the atmosphere, will become not simply spectators, but co-participants in the performance. Involving the viewers in their pieces, the authors invite them to acquire a new artistic experience in a classical museum.

“This is a bold experiment because everyone thinks that they understand the paintings so well and there should be no other interpretation, while in point of fact a new vision emerges. Creative spirits will never speak about what it is generally accepted to see in a painting, but will speak about what they see,” Mikhail Piotrovsky, General Director of the State Hermitage, said about the project.

“Many different things are now being done in museums – a lot of them can be accepted, a lot can’t. I think that the Hermitage is setting the tone and offering a special treatment, a special approach to what is at one and the same time a new and an old theme – the presence of the human being alongside an image, a presence in the form of the spoken word, dance and music.

“I don’t doubt that the whole thing will be received with great interest. I don’t doubt that it will arouse rejection in many people, but I am sure that a majority will gain enormous satisfaction. For them, it will reveal new views of well-known works.”

The premiere will take place on 16 September 2021. The following performances will also be on Thursdays – 23 and 28 September, then 7, 14, 21 and 28 October. During the evenings, the Hermitage will appear to visitors in a new, unaccustomed form. Setting off on a journey around the displays of the New Hermitage, the audience will pass from hall to hall, from scene to scene, encountering masterpieces that have come to life and immersing themselves in an atmosphere created under impressions from works by Rembrandt, Francesco Melzi, Antonio Canova and other great masters,

Tickets can be purchased through the State Hermitage website. They cost 1,500 roubles for all categories of visitors. Ticket-holders will be received by time slots and also taking into account the maximum permitted number of people under the rules operating at that moment. All the scenes will be performed simultaneously and repeated several times over the course of the evening.

More about the Flora project and its participants.