Word: otte
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TELEVISION ACQUAINTANCE. Backstage squabbling at the Bolshoi: intrepid Estonian journalist Urmas Ott gets to the bottom of it during a revealing 90- minute interview with prima ballerina Maya Plisetskaya...
...Bastille opera is designed to be austerely functional -- a bleak concrete, stainless-steel and glass oval, with gray-black granite floors and walls and five revolving stages for fast changes of scene. "The whole idea of this opera house is that it is very sober," according to architect Carlos Ott, 42. "You don't have decoration inside the hall. The decor is on the stage...
...country where the private lives of public figures are veiled in mystery, Ott dares to ask questions that others only think about. What salaries do Soviet athletes earn? What sort of family life does an opera singer have? His guests may balk at the questions or try to evade them, but every honest answer is a small victory for openness. Says Ott: "I am sometimes accused of being too philistine in my approach. But I think such questions are exactly what viewers find interesting. Families, apartments and salaries are the only points where their lives touch and overlap with celebrities...
...Ott's style of questioning were turned on himself, he would reply that he is a bachelor who shares an apartment with relatives in Tallinn, the Baltic port city that serves as Estonia's capital. "If I were a Russian, the only type of life for me would be in Moscow," he says. "But I am an Estonian, and the surroundings in Tallinn suit me." As for his salary, he is paid the equivalent of $320 for each broadcast. Ott considers playing tennis a "sacred activity." Not that he has much free time these days. A celebrity...
...Ott believes Soviet TV has responded too cautiously to the possibilities of glasnost. Sometimes he muses about expanding his spectrum of guests. Since he is an avid fan of classical music, he is eager to interview international artists like Leonard Bernstein and even emigre cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. Nor would he rule out a broadcast with exiled novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn. He has also considered bringing on leading Soviet economists and politicians. Says he: "We now read the papers and watch TV in a kind of ecstasy, as if something extraordinary has happened. But what is so extraordinary about...