

"Mozart and Salieri"... Since Pushkin's "little tragedy" about these composers appeared, nobody would believe Salieri's innocence. Seems, Pushkin dotted all the i's... But what if everything was completely different? Or quite different?
Working on an opera upon Pushkin’s text, Rimsky-Korsakov tried to avoid opera tradition of the XIXth century and gave with a fresh start. He started the experiment looking for his new style and didn’t need the experienced librettist, who always knew that innocently killed tenor is always right, the bass is a villain and it is supposed to weep at the end.
Who of them was right? The music is supposed to answer the question. Rimsky-Korsakov quotes only the little fragment from REQUIEM, the very same Mozart's work, which Pushkin says about. REQUIEM is performed as a whole on Helikon-Opera's stage, closing the old debates of genius and villainy.
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