| Anatoly Iksanov remains general director of the Bolshoi Theater For the next five years, the Bolshoi Theater will move on the same course - this is the result of yesterday's meeting of the board of the Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography. The board, led by FAKK head Mikhail Shvydkoy, had to decide whether or not to renew the contract of Bolshoi General Director Anatoly Iksanov (he took up his duties at the beginning of the 2000/01 season, and the contract with him expires), and in order to make a decision, listened to his report , reports from the theater's musical director Alexander Vedernikov and artistic director of the ballet troupe Alexei Ratmansky. In the end they decided to extend; but the meeting itself turned out to be interesting.
It started off rather dryly: Anatoly Iksanov listed the theater’s achievements over five years. The number of premieres per season (in 2000/01 - four, in 2004/05 - seven), the number of performances in the hospital (increased from 269 to 449 per season), attracting sponsorship funds (from eight to one hundred million per season). Increase in wages for workers: artists - six times, administrative and technical employees - three times. The commissioning of the New Stage (in two weeks it will host the tenth premiere) and the preparation of the main stage for closure for reconstruction - the everyday life of the theater director. Alexander Vedernikov took a different intonation - he immediately seemed to begin to respond to those who attacked the Bolshoi because of the production of “Rosenthal’s Children”: the theater is not a place for escaping reality, the theater is a testing ground for new ideas, the theater can develop according to two models - - open and isolationist, and if we want to “close” the theater, we will lose our artists, since they are in demand in the West. The chief conductor also spoke about the problems of the Bolshoi: the lack of new conducting names (and suggested that the Federal Agency, together with the theater, organize a professional competition) and about labor legislation, due to the imperfections of which the theater cannot switch to a more flexible contract system. (That is, to get rid of the voiceless trade union activists and invite worthy singers in their place - this is to be translated from the official language into Russian.) Alexey Ratmansky also seemed to be polemicizing with an unnamed opponent who was eager to mothball the theater and turn it into a dead repository of a great heritage. He said that the Bolshoi is responsible for the development of Russian choreography and therefore the theater needs experiments and debuts of young choreographers. That the theater has begun the practice of inviting foreign teachers (two stars of the Paris Opera - Violette Verdi and Michael Denard have already worked at the Bolshoi), and it is clear that this worries some (local veterans are embarrassed - A.G. ), but we must remember that At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the Russian school was created by the French and Italians. The Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Bolshoi Theater Board of Trustees, Konstantin Remchukov, in the style of “he said it, he cut it off”, said that Iksanov carries out “management that is understandable to us,” and recalled that at first there were also supporters of conservative politics on the board of trustees (he did not say where they later went ). Then came even more exciting performances.
Vitaly Klintsov, a representative of the consulting company McKinsey, attracted everyone's attention when he said that when his company began working with the Bolshoi, the first thing its employees did was talk to the ballerinas. We found out that they receive little money. Then we talked with speculators - “infiltrated one of our consultants into this group of people” (!) - and found out that millions were being made under the columns of the Bolshoi. The result was a new pricing policy for the Bolshoi, and money began to flow to the theater rather than to the bugs - this made it possible to pay large salaries to the artists.
Two invited experts - RSUH professor Vadim Gaevsky and editor-in-chief of the magazine "Musical Academy" Marina Nestyeva - spoke about the Bolshoi ballet and opera: Gaevsky described what happened to the ballet over five years as a big leap, a grand jete out of the swamp; Nestyeva scattered small remarks about individual works of theater singers and delved into memories of the great singers whom she had heard in her life.
The meeting moved into a climax phase when Valery Gergiev took the floor. Having talked about the achievements of the Mariinsky Theater (the meeting was actually dedicated to the Bolshoi), he boasted of the million collected from Moscow spectators during the tour week and advised Iksanov to “count our money.” Then he caressed the board of trustees (“the heads of transnational corporations showed attention to us, while Russian business was a jungle”) and modestly reported that when La Scala had a conflict with Ricardo Muti, it was he, Gergiev, who was offered the job. That was all that the wonderful conductor said on the merits of the issue. The speeches of the State Duma deputies were no less sparkling. Alexander Fomenko (from the Rodina party) consistently stated that the Bolshoi Theater is an imperial theater and that it has democratic traditions (meaning that both contradict the production of Rosenthal's Children). The imposing, clever Oleg Tabakov, who came to the board in a vest, in response to this whirlwind of thought, quoted Pushkin in a velvety voice: “Learn to control yourself - not everyone, like me, will understand you.” And Elena Drapeko (Communist Party of the Russian Federation), in the best traditions of communist rhetoric, delivered a monologue that, by financing the Bolshoi Theater in a separate line, the State Duma is choosing between the theater, allocating money to hospitals and building a highway (nothing was said about the salaries of the elected representatives) - but ended on the straight -on a lyrical note: a request to perceive the deputies “not as enemies, not even as controllers, but as comrades” and “to conclude a truce between the State Duma and the Bolshoi Theater.”
A truce was concluded - the alliance was sealed with a kiss from Mr. Iksanov and Comrade Drapeko. And all those present - both those who approved of the activities of the general director of the Bolshoi, who really did a lot for the theater in these five years, and those who would prefer another, their own, person in this place in the coming years of reconstruction of the main stage and the injection of cash flows - sighed, finally realizing how difficult this work is. Anna GORDEEVA |
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