Russian Accent | Blog of Nadia Sikorsky

The Orchestre de la Suisse Romande invites music lovers to concerts in Geneva, Lausanne and Lucerne on May 20, 21 and 22. Under the direction of Lithuanian conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, with Latvian pianist Georgijs Osokins as soloist, the orchestra presents an original programme featuring works by Frank Martin, Frédéric Chopin, Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel.

Today in Europe, and tomorrow in Russia, Victory Day is commemorated: for Europeans, the Second World War; for Russians, the Great Patriotic War. Unfortunately, this holiday has ceased to be shared. It is precisely these days that the exhibition We and War is taking place at the Swiss National Museum in Zurich, in a country that did not take part in combat operations.

On 2 May, the Metropolitan Opera broadcast Eugene Onegin from New York to audiences around the world. I could not resist the pleasure of hearing this beloved opera again, at the Cinéma Empire in Geneva.

An early work by the popular Geneva-based writer was reissued twenty years after its first publication and caught my eye.

To begin with, let me clarify: this is not about the French political figure whose remains rest in the Panthéon, but about a religious thinker and philosopher who, at the age of ten, declared herself a “Bolshevik”.

These days, Geneva’s Théâtre de Carouge is presenting "Ivanov", directed by the French director Jean-François Sivadier, who has taken on the Russian repertoire for the first time. In my view, there is a dissonance between him and Chekhov.

The outstanding writer whom Russia, Switzerland and the United States all regard as their own would have been 127 today: Vladimir Nabokov was born in St Petersburg on 22 April (New Style) 1899. On this occasion I would like write about a very interesting book published last year in his native city.

Assessing Richard Strauss’s opera Arabella, recently revived on the stage of the Zurich Opera House in a 2020 production by the Canadian director Robert Carsen, it is important to bear in mind the date of its creation, 1933.