Word: bolshoi
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When Moscow's Bolshoi Opera paid its first visit to the U.S. in 1975, it amply lived up to its name, which is Russian for big. The company offered majestic productions of such epics as Prokofiev's War and Peace and Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, plus that Russian national favorite, Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin. That was the monolithic age of Brezhnev, after all, and the Bolshoi had long been the Kremlin's chief cultural weapon; the party bureaucracy decreed the choices of repertory, casting, even stage sets. The results were as strong as a tank, and just as subtle. Still...
...dramatic upheavals that have reshaped Soviet society since then have also transformed cultural life. Glasnost and perestroika have done wonders in some fields, but in the pampered world of the nation's artistic institutions, change and the onset of Western-style competition have caused severe difficulties. The Bolshoi, among others, has seen its state subsidies go way down; at the same time, expenses have gone up, and the company's conservative and inefficient practices have been placed in a harsh new light. Moreover, many of the U.S.S.R.'s brightest young singers, now free to seek opportunities wherever they like, have...
Last week the Bolshoi began a return visit to the U.S., and its opening production showed the effects of its struggle to adapt to changing times. At Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera House, the company presented a brand-new version of its trademark work, Eugene Onegin. Only in the ballroom scene of the last act did the Bolshoi offer a whiff of its old grandiosity. Otherwise, the staging -- apparently designed to focus more attention on the main characters -- relied on one all-too-all-purpose country-house set for the first four scenes and on one skeletal tree for the fifth...
...casting of Onegin was designed to show off the Bolshoi's new crop of young singers. What is different about them? "Everything," says company spokesperson Svetlana Zavgorodnaya, with characteristically Russian fervor. "New emotions, new aesthetics, a new understanding of life!" Be that as it may, the young singers carry on the company's tradition of close ensemble performance. Vladimir Redkin as Onegin was an appropriately dashing cad. And in Nina Rautio, the Bolshoi presented a Tatiana who could be touchingly lyrical and also break a glass in the uppermost gallery. She carried her scenes triumphantly...
...this is the house of Tchaikovsky. Here we understand and revere him. Other companies have used the score like wallpaper music." In the dance world, those are fighting words. American Ballet Theater and San Francisco Ballet have recently restaged the work; Britain's Royal Ballet, the Soviet Kirov and Bolshoi companies have versions they consider historic. "Tchaikovsky's score markings are very close to what I want," notes Martins. "But people have been selfish through the years and accommodate themselves with slow tempi...