My Paradise

Мой парадиз

Composer Francesco Araja served under Empresses Anna Ioannovna and Elizabeth Petrovna, dedicating his entire talent to Russia. Although he could rightly be called one of the finest opera composers of his time, today he has been unjustly forgotten, and his works are no longer performed on stage... This realization sparked the idea for music director Andrey Reshetin, a violinist, and director Gleb Piryatinsky, the creative minds behind 'The Birth of Russian Opera,' to bring Araja back to audiences and reveal the uniqueness of his talent.

Gleb Piryatinsky: "Through his music—and thanks to this project—we can ride like on a magical cloud into the 18th century and see Russian history as a series of cultural events, where each new ruler made an aesthetic leap that advanced the artistic language—the soul of the empire and its people. When we talk about the 18th century, we invite people to touch the artistic strings of that era. It seems as if all we need to do is brush off the dust and tighten the strings, and they will start to resonate. But we also need a guide into this world—and Francesco Araja became that guide."

Andrey Reshetin: "The cult film for all musicians who play Baroque music is 'Tous les matins du monde' ('All the Mornings of the World') with Gérard Depardieu as Sainte-Colombe, the master of the viola da gamba. The beauty of its shots literally takes your breath away. 'My Paradise'… is an answer to 'Tous les matins du monde'—a work in which Baroque music, aware of its own beauty and transmitting it, conveys modernity."

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Actors

The ensemble "Catherine the Great's Soloists"

Crew

Director

Gleb Piryatinskiy

Music director

Andrey Reshetin

Editor

Genrikh Ignatov

Production designer

Daniil Vedernikov

Cinematographer

Dmitriy Nagovskiy

About

"My Paradise" is the first season of the project "The Birth of Russian Opera." Here, the ancient art of Baroque music meets a new art form—cinema. The film is built around six arias from operas by Francesco Araja: "The Power of Love and Hate," "Seleucus," "The Feigned Ninus, or Semiramis Recognized," and "Cephalus and Procris."

The musicians of the ensemble "Catherine the Great's Soloists," led by Andrey Reshetin, recall this era and its music, to borrow Plato's language. The project's participants connect with Araja and his patronesses—Empresses Anna Ioannovna and Elizabeth Petrovna—through his scores and the sound of his music. The language of this film is, above all, a precise musical score, free of scripts or directions—a living encounter with the history of opera's birth.

For Russia, the 18th century was a time of cultural exchange. Musicians arrived from Germany, Italy, and France—styles from their home countries intersected, and something new emerged, seamlessly integrated into both Russian and European culture.

Francesco Araja came to Russia in 1735 and lived here for 25 years. He immediately set to work fulfilling Anna Ioannovna's ambition to transform St. Petersburg into one of the world's leading opera capitals. He composed the first opera in the Russian language—"Cephalus and Procris" with a libretto by Alexander Sumarokov—music that is at once exquisitely refined in its Northern sensibility yet infused with Italian passion.

Araja is a figure of staggering creative scope. His significance for Russian culture can be compared to that of Rastrelli, the master of Baroque architecture. The work of these two brilliant Italians was closely intertwined with affairs of state, reflecting the might and grandeur of the Russian monarchs: in Rastrelli's case, through the construction of imperial residences; in Araja's, through the composition and performance of operas and cantatas commemorating coronations and the birthdays of the reigning sovereigns.