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While we have limited access to live performances on the theatre stage, a pandemic-proof theatre – Opera on Wheels – will be visiting us. For the second year in a row, the Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theatre are teaming up with Girteka Logistics to bring the opera The Servant Mistress to the squares of the country’s most remote towns and villages. Last year, the opera’s charm was nominated for the prestigious Theatre Awards Golden Cross of Stage Theatre Awards. This year, the number of opera performances in the tugboat is set to triple, and the first performance in Vilnius Verkiai Palace Park will celebrate the capital’s 700th birthday.
As the pandemic continues in Lithuania and around the world, the cultural sector is facing great difficulties: with theatre, music and dance venues that used to host hundreds and thousands of spectators are falling silent. This is pleasantly shattered by the Opera on Wheels project, which brings the joy of opera to the inhabitants of villages and towns even in the most remote areas of the country during the quarantine.
“We are honoured and excited to be part of the project for the second year in a row, ensuring that our trucks deliver a somewhat unusual, but emotionally valuable cargo – a travelling opera – on time and to the right place. Another year in quarantine has been exhausting for many, so the project, which received a lot of positive feedback last year, has become even more meaningful this year,” says Head of Marketing and Communications Simonas Bartkus.
For the first time this year, the one-act comic opera The Servant Mistress, which is travelling by tugboat, will be performed in Vilnius, in the park of Verkiai Palace, on June 4 at 7 p.m. The event will celebrate the 700th birthday of Vilnius. From today, registration for the event will be open on the official website of the Lithuanian Opera and Ballet Theatre.
On June 8, the travelling opera The Servant Mistress will arrive by tugboat at Šalčininkai City Park, at 27 Mokyklos Street, starting at 6 pm. On June 19, at 6 p.m., it will be performed in the courtyard of Antazavė Manor, 17 Dvaro Street, and on June 26 in Leliūnai, in the main square, starting from 6:30 p.m. Information about where Opera on Wheels will take place – venues, dates, conditions of participation – will be published on our corporate channels and on the website of the Lithuanian Opera and Ballet Theatre. The information will be updated on an ongoing basis.
The plot of the opera The Servant Mistress is about a maid who aspires to become a housewife and who ingeniously takes advantage her master, may not be very sophisticated, but it will make many laugh. Love and cunning triumph in the end: all those gathered at the tugboat become guests at the wedding of the maid and her master.
As in previous years, the opera soloists Monika Pleškytė, Kšištofas Bondarenko and Egidijus Dauskurdis, as well as the actor Benadas Arkauskas, are getting ready for the challenge of the travelling opera.
