Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) -- The Embassy of France and the State Academic Bolshoi Theater named after Alisher Navoi have the honor to invite fans of French music to J. Bizet’s opera The Pearl Fishers.

This project will show the audience the result of fruitful cooperation between the artists of France and Uzbekistan. After all, thanks to the joint efforts of the department for culture and cooperation of the French Embassy and the administration of the Bolshoi Theater, conductor Natalie Marin and opera singer (soprano) Blerta Zhegu were invited from France, who were able to participate in the production of the opera working side by side with their Uzbek colleagues.

The director of the opera is the Honored Worker of Culture of Uzbekistan Haydarali Kasimov.

Soloists: Leila (soprano) – Blerta Zhegu

Nadir (tenor) - Samandar Alimov

Zurga (baritone) - Rakhim Mirzakamalov

Nurabad (bass) - Jabroil Idrisov.

At the conductor’s stand, the famous conductor from France - Natalie Marin.

Natalie Marin holds a Diploma in Orchestral Conducting from the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen. She has worked as a guest conductor with the Buenos Aires Philharmonic, Brussels Philharmonic, Nice Philharmonic, Cannes Symphony and many other orchestras. She has also been a regular conductor at the Mersin Theater in Turkey. Today he is the artistic director of the Havana XXI ensemble.

She has performed in prestigious concert halls and theaters such as Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, La Fenice theater in Venice, Shanghai, La Cité de la Musique in Paris, where she staged Karl-Enz Stockhausen alongside Michel Tabachnik. In December 2022, she was a guest conductor of the State Symphony Orchestra of Uzbekistan, whose concert was a great success.

Blerta Zhegu - French-Albanian opera singer began to learn singing from Nina Mula. Then she improved at the Claudio Monteverdi Conservatory in Bolzano (Italy) in 2012 and at the Conservatory. Darius Milhaud, Aix-en-Provence in 2016. During these years, she completed her studies with Nathaniel Brodsky (former soloist with the Chicago Opera and the Metropolitan Opera in New York). She is the winner of various awards such as: 1st Prize at the ArsKosova Competition in Kosovo, Special Jury Prize at the VI Rassegna Concertistica in Montichiari, Italy and 3rd Prize at the Trofeo la Fenice Competition in Seravezza, Italy.

The production of the opera “The Pearl Fishers” in this composition will be presented to the audience one time, on 15 April at 18:00.