Who is power here

Instead of the protocol-representative event devoted to commissioning the next Mariinka-City section, the audience of the solemn opening of the new scene of the Mariinsky Theater, which was broadcasting throughout the world, became one of the most spectacular political manifestations in the domestic culture of the last decades. The inauguration of Mariinka-2 will go down in history as a gesture of demonstration of force, an intimidation action with multidirectional semantic vectors, facing the most wide audience. On May 2, the political subtext of the gala concert obscured even that seemed to be the key motive for acquaintance with the new house of Valery Gergiev’s wards and demonstrations of the unprecedented technical capabilities of this Smart House -built on the model and likeness of the western musical theaters of the turn of the millennium and already recognized by practitioners in Russia for occupation and ballet deeds. There is a certain justice in such a plot turn: whatever it is, but to understand something essential about Mariinka-2 (and, say, about her acoustics, which some experts call some expertly today, and others are problematic) and in fact it will be possible only after the release of the first full-fledged prime ministers-the “ sacred spring ” of Sasha Waltz (May 13) and “ Mermaid ” by Vasily Barkhatov (May 24).

To begin with, Valery Gergiev decided to go immediately with a good dozen trump cards, showing who is the owner in the house-implying under the “house”, of course, not the Mariinka herself, where his forces in the last twenty-five years was not seriously disputed by anyone, and the entire Russian opera-ballet industry. Such a scenario of the development of events was, in essence, easily predictable - the quotes of the Mariinsky Theater on the domestic cultural exchange in recent years were rapidly falling: at first - in a situation of obvious artistic stagnation, and this season also against the negative background of public discontent by the creation of the Canadian architectural bureau Diamond & Schmitt Architects (Flaging at the very moment when Mariinka-2 opened the doors to the general public-instantly, as if only a wave of a conductor's stick). In other words, from Valery Gergiev, it was worth waiting for a response strong gesture, capable of strengthening the positions of the St. Petersburg Theater Square as a “place of power”. For this good purpose, two proven Mariinsky resources were used on the gala concert on May 2-personnel-administrative and imperious.

It is well known how much Valery Gergiev made for the current Russian government: at the beginning of the zero, the Mariinsky Theater acted an arena for the celebration of the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg, which has become the most important diplomatic milestone of the Early Putin era, from the middle of the last decade, the Mariinsky leader voluntarily took on the role of one of the leading conductors of the internal and external Putin policy in the West ( "" The Loyalist ” - this is the name of the key text of the English Gergian Bibliography published four years ago in The New York Times ) - not to mention many separate invaluable image services like a memorable concert of the Mariinsky Theater orchestra in Tskhinval. Last Thursday, Mariinka was given to the storytake: to VIP gyes (among which were, among others, Gennady Timchenko, German Gref, Mikhail Gutseriev and Victor Vekselberg) at the end of the concert Vladimir Putin and Valery Gergiev were descended into an embrace, exactly like old-sex friends, and for the introductory word the first person of the state saved the first person of the state Far from the protocol canon of intonation-“Spoken-Frome-Hart”, reminding the city and the world about the non-pay duty of the Russian State Eaglers to the Mariinsky Theater in general and personally to the maestro Gergiev.

In terms of the power and brilliance of the personnel resource, the Mariinsky Theater still has no competitors, at least in Russia.

The upper, most easily readable content plan of Mariinka-2-a reminder of the function of the Mariinsky Theater as the cultural facade of Putin's Russia-is directly related to the semantic mediastinum of the gala concert, which was inevitably compared with a half years ago to the opening of the historical scene of the large. During his preparation, the theater leadership collided, recall, with a delicate personnel problem: in the state of the formally the main opera house of the country, there was not a single truly significant artist on a world -wide scale, with whom he could have identified himself today. Then the problem of the absence of a truly undisputed art leader was solved in a blessedly predictably predictably-inviting status opera stars from the West, who came to congratulate the Famous Bolshoi Theater on the triumph in a somewhat tormented format “All Flags to visit us”.

There were only two invited singers at the opening of Mariinka-2-Placido Domingo (at one time, by the way, launched an invitation to perform at the opening of the renewed large one) and Rene Papa. The main backbone of it was turned by Vasily Marghatov and Zinovy ​​Margolin into a clear theatrical statement of the concert program consisted of performances by the standard artists of the Mariinsky Theater, from Crème de la Crème of both of his troupes: who flew to Petersburg from Parisian Théâtre des Champs Elysées Ildar Abdrazakov, Gaest Star of the nearest premiere of Opéra Bastille Evgeny Nikitin, the heroine of the recent Aida in the Berlin Staatsoper Ekaterina Semenchuk, who had just triumphantly performed in the Faust of New York MET Aleksey Markov, shortly after the gala concert of the premiere of “Data of the Bogs” in LA in LA in LA SCALA Mikhail Petrenko-and all this, of course, not counting the mini-Benfis of Olga Borodina, Diana Vishneva, Ulyana Lopatkina and Anna Netrebko. And it is not so important how convincing these or those episodes of the gala concert (ultimately left a patriotic-condo impression)-the social statuses of its participants mean much more than how much their voices sounded here turned out to be convincing.

Not only his own sixtieth anniversary, but also for the twenty -five anniversary of work on theater square, Valery Gergiev, not without ostentatious declarativeness, noted how much the pupils of his “fighting club” were able to achieve - along the way not without pride in terms of the power and brilliance of personnel resources at the Mariinsky Theater. There are still no competitors, at least in Russia. It seems that this is precisely the true super-unit of the inauguration of Mariinka-2-in the proprietary Gergievsky ability to concentrate around itself a field of colossal artistic tension. The king, as you know, is played by a retinue-in this sense, the gala concert on May 2 became a ceremonial portrait of that one based on the sacred nature of the authorities and subordinate to the principles of the tough unity of unity of unity of unity of unity of unity of unity of unity of unity of unity of unity of native of the monarchy, which was sequentially and methodically built in St. Petersburg Kolomne for the last quarter of a century.