A concert entitled "A Song Will Awaken the Sleeping Heart" was held at the Astana Opera House to mark the 180th anniversary of the great poet-educator, composer, and philosopher Abai Kunanbayev.

This evening saw the premiere of a collection of romances by composer Erkegali Rakhmadiev set to poems by Abai Kunanbayev. In particular, there are poems "My dear country, my Kazakh, my beloved people", "When the summer was July", "My heart has returned, both from a friend and from an enemy...", "There is no friend among the people", "You are a pheasant with a brass wing", "Black woman", "My heart is rushing to the desert...". In addition, the program included four romances: "I write a greeting", "The language of a lover is a languageless language", "Sometimes your heart beats faster", "Love, with passion - that's two ways", arias from the opera "Abai" by Akhmet Zhubanov and Latif Hamidi, as well as songs written to the poet's words by Sydyk Mukhamedzhanov, Mansur Sagatov and Evgeny Brusilovsky. It should be noted that the concert "Sleeping heart will wake up" was the beginning of the events dedicated to the 180th anniversary of Abai Kunanbayev at the theater. In the fall, a concert will be held, where works by other composers who wrote songs to the poet's words will be performed.

Let us recall that the Astana Opera repertoire includes works depicting the life and work of Abai. For example, in 2015, the premiere of the opera "Abai" by Akhmet Zhubanov and Latif Hamidi, based on the libretto by Mukhtar Auezov, took place in the Great Hall of the theater. For this production, the theater received the State Prize of the Republic of Kazakhstan in 2018.

Press service of the Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Kazakhstan

Source : https://www.gov.kz/memleket/entities/mam/press/news/details/948966