Submitted Photo The 1891 Fredonia Opera House will present the Bolshoi Ballet performing the comic ballet, The Bright Stream, on Saturday at 1 p.m.

The 1891 Fredonia Opera House will present one of the world’s greatest ballet companies — the Bolshoi Ballet — performing the comic ballet, The Bright Stream, on Saturday  at 1 p.m.

Originally presented in Moscow in 2012, this captured live via satellite encore performance is the first of five ballets from the Bolshoi that the Opera House will present over the winter months.

With its dancing farmers and cycling dog, Dmitri Shostakovich thought his score for the ballet The Bright Stream would delight Joseph Stalin when he created it in 1935. Instead it was banned shortly after its premiere. The ballet’s co-librettist, Adrian Piotrovsky, was sent to a gulag and never heard of again, while the creative career of its choreographer, Fedor Lopukhov, was all but terminated. Shosta-kovich’s reputation was so badly damaged that his music was never again played during the Soviet era, beyond a heavily edited suite of his most popular tunes.

Unable to restore the original choreography of the ballet, which was never notated, former Bolshoi Director Alexei Ratmansky in 2003 wrote his own choreography and staged a new version of the ballet. In it, he invokes the currently recognized genius of Shostakovich’s score, creating a laugh-out-loud masterpiece with bits of slapstick comedy, hilarious deceptions and false identities — including Principal Dancer Ruslan Skvortsov dressed as a Sylph — and many colorful characters!

The storyline centers around a group of ballet dancers who have been sent to provide sophisticated entertainment to a Soviet collective farm. The appearance of the visiting dance troupe reunites a ballerina with her childhood friend, Zina.  In order to teach her unfaithful husband a lesson, Zina, the ballerina and the ballerina’s husband decide to swap roles for the evening.

The Bolshoi bursts with vivid life and bright spirit in Ratmansky’s brilliantly choreographed ballet, which runs two hours, 30 minutes.

Individual tickets to The Bright Stream are $15, ($10 students). A special Live in HD Series flexible subscription of eight tickets that can be used however you want – one at a time to eight different HD Series events, all at once for eight people, or anything in between, is $116. Tickets may be purchased in person at the Opera House Box Office or by phone at 679-1891, Tuesday-Friday, 1 to 5 p.m. Tickets may be purchased online anytime at www.fredopera.org.

This presentation is made possible with support from the United Arts Appeal of Chautauqua County, the Arts Services Initiative of WNY Inc., and the Give for Greatness program.

The 1891 Fredonia Opera House is a member-supported not-for-profit organization located in village hall in downtown Fredonia. For a complete schedule of events, visit www.fredopera.org.