On 20 December, Jānis Kaijaks, teacher, conductor, composer and winner of the Great Music Prize, will celebrate his 85th birthday. For many years he was the artistic director of the Riga Operetta Theatre, placing the Riga Operetta Theatre among the very best in the then Soviet Union, and purposefully developing the Viennese operetta style in Latvian operetta.
The concert programme includes Viennese operetta dance music, operetta soloists, dancers and orchestra. The soloists’ enchantingly beautiful voices set to music from the world’s operetta gold fund will create a thrilling festive mood!
The programme will include melodic, lyrical and wistful pieces, as well as fiery and entertaining pieces – songs, arias and duets. With the popular music of the Strauss dynasty, the Operetta Orchestra brings the beautiful New Year’s Eve tradition of the Viennese symphony to Latvia.
The programme includes popular opera fragments by Johann Strauss and Franz Schubert, as well as fragments from Maestro Kajiak’s 2008 production of Imre Kalman’s operetta The Circus Princess, as well as operettas by the Austrian Robert Stolz, arias, duets and trios by P. Abrahams. And as usual at our end-of-year concerts, we will also have a musical preview of the upcoming new production of Cole Porter’s musical comedy “Kiss Me Kate!” (Kiss me, Kate).
The concert will also feature operetta dancers and an orchestra under the direction of the maestro’s conducting school successor Guntaras Bernātas, with the orchestral reins handed over to the old master for some of the concert’s numbers.
