Leila Guchmazova. After the spanking

After the spanking
Leila Guchmazova

Date of publication: October 31, 2000

Bearded joke. At the Bolshoi Theater box office, a respectable gentleman whines through the window: “Girl, I’m an old Russian intellectual... Find a couple of tickets... I’m an old Russian intellectual... A couple of tickets...” The cashier is adamant, time is ticking. His companion timidly touches his sleeve: “Maybe we should leave it?” The gentleman, without changing his tone, half turned: “Masha, go to hell!” And again: “Girl, I’m an old Russian intellectual...”

The new art head of the Bolshoi Theater, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, met with the press on Friday. Brief and talented, just for an hour. In the best traditions of Soviet management, he first let down the enterprise entrusted to him: the Bolshoi Theater is a ship without control, sunk by three quarters - a delight, how figuratively. It is necessary to restore order in everything, from start to finish - who would argue. Next are some optimistic plans, more solid for opera and less for ballet (the superficial predictions about the unloved dancing stepson quickly come true). And then the distribution of earrings (or elephants) to all the sisters began. Pressed the press. Small, twitching phrases and mistakes, and most importantly - very angry. A harsh word, too clear a forecast, the wrong last name of the tenor; and this, imagine, a certain Witz dared to write - the name is spoken with morbid pleasure, spoken, spoken again with whistling sarcasm. Particularly sensitive people present hide their eyes.

Musical academics are usually on the fringes in the same uterine environment of newspaper and magazine critics; in a narrow circle, everyone not only knows each other, but manages to become an eyesore even with the warmest relationships. I have no illusions about my colleagues; the critical ball of snakes is certainly not a metaphor, but rather a diagnosis. But here! There was a feeling of corporate unity that a professional French striker probably feels after a good glass of wine. A postman or a gas station worker - it doesn’t matter. Public flogging in the temple of art - this joy is stronger than Goethe's Faust, it inspires long and sad thoughts. The reason for the aggression remained behind the scenes. It was as if Rozhdestvensky had been thrown into a cauldron (well, I don’t know with what), he drank, emerged, but managed to become embittered. The whippings of the newspaper yuppies revived the exalted old women. The Bolshoi Theater is not horseradish with mayonnaise! National treasure!

We are not toothless, we are not impotent. The colleagues, who fit into the time quota, clearly lined up their questions and extracted from the artistic director that there would be no open competition for recruiting votes for the opera - which means that all well-intentioned projects would be carried out by the same soloists, including the globally promoted nihil of Nikolai Baskov. That the boss has blurred ideas about the merits of the current ballet repertoire: “love” Balanchine was suggested by the whole world. In a word, it became clear that Rozhdestvensky in the situation is a good leader, but not an eagle. And yet such aspirin is a weak painkiller after a lynching.

I have rather wicked Provençal ideas that an intellectual becomes embittered, not in any special way, not like all the other people, but in a more correct tone. Not from hypocrisy, but - here - at least for the sake of PR worthy of the Bolshoi art head. One of my acquaintances, watching four handsome men loading books, throwing heavy bundles from hand to hand, remarked: “Look, they don’t swear!” We probably got along like dying romantics. I would like the book loaders to behave not like loaders of jars of squash caviar. So that the artistic director of the main musical theater does not descend to public squabbles and petty one-sided settling of scores with our talkative brother. So that life is not powdered, but at least a little adequate.