The 22nd Vasily Safonov International Academic Music Festival under the title “Music is the Time of Genius” has opened in the North Caucasian State Philharmonic Hall, Kislovodsk.

      This year the grand-scale annual festival will present 56 concerts with masterpieces of Beethoven, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov and other geniuses of various eras. They will be performed by renowned musicians from Italy, Russia, Switzerland, Belarus, and Georgia.

      According to the festival organizers, the most large-scale projects will take place on the stage of the V. I. Safonov North Caucasian Philharmonic Hall. These will be performances of Gustav Mahler’s 1^st Symphony on July 22, and the premiere of Giacomo Puccini’s opera Melancholy planned for July 18.

      The festival traditionally commemorates Vasily Safonov (1852-1918), an outstanding musician, teacher, public figure and educator, who greatly contributed to development of academic music in the North Caucasus.

      The festival will last till August 5.