“I am looking forward with hope,” he said. He recently had an audition with the Boston Lyric Opera and is trying to secure auditions with other opera houses in the U.S., and he’s in negotiations with U.S.
Silchukou has returned to the stage, collaborating with pianist Pavel Nersessian, an associate professor at Boston University, for two recent concerts in Boston and New Jersey.įor both, he put together a retrospective of some of his personal favorite pieces spanning his career from his first singing lessons to his time at the national opera, including “Papageno” from “The Magic Flute” and “Cavatina Figaro” from the “The Barber of Seville.” “You cannot be successful in a country that is a prison, and unfortunately our country is a prison right now.” “Ilya is a real patriot of Belarus,” she said. Lvova and her husband first saw Silchukou at one of his last public performances in Minsk and “fell in love with his voice,” she said.īut she was also impressed with his bravery for standing up to Lukashenko. The family came to the East Coast about a year ago at the suggestion of Marina Lvova, who runs the nonprofit Belarusians in Boston.
“Lots of kids in Belarus have both parents in prison,” he said. He took it as a thinly-veiled threat to break up their family. Still, it wasn’t until March 2021 when the police came after his wife, Tanya, and accused her of defrauding the nation’s state-sponsored child support system and threatened her with two years in jail that he knew he had to get out. In response, he had one more act of defiance - using his baritone voice in a video of the traditional Belarusian hymn, “Mahutny Bozha,” which means “Mighty God,” and has become a signature anthem of the opposition to Lukashenko. His public opposition to Lukashenko got him fired from the opera for an “act of immorality” and he was black-listed, he said. I said, ‘Yes they pay me, but they don’t own me.'” “I was well paid in Belarus and I had all the benefits from that. “They said, ‘What is the problem with you? You have everything you need,'” he said.
0 kommentar(er)
