Opera Trionfo will be staging the first performance ever of an eighteenth-century Russian opera in the Netherlands. Set in the delightful gardens of the Hermitage Amsterdam, the company will perform Skupoi (the Miser) by Vasily Pashkevich.
Pashkevich was Catherine the Great's favourite court composer. He turned Molière's satirical play into a sparkling singspiel: an opera with spoken dialogue. Pashkevich's operas were a great success at the Sint Petersburg Hermitage, which was frequented by a host of famous European composers, writers, actors and musicians. Music historians consider Pashkevich to be the first important opera composer in Russian history.