Evening Moscow/№9Translated material
Mice dance
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Gennady Khazanov
Helikon’s “The Bat” on TV Center
Helikon Opera is one of the strangest theaters in Moscow. The young director Dmitry Bertman stages operas here, in which young handsome men and beauties of completely non-operatic build sing. Girls have a waist, boys don't have a triple chin. Although they sing quite well here (one of the prima donnas, Natalya Zvyagintseva, was nominated this year for the Golden Mask, the country’s main theater award), they consider the voice and the actual quality of performance not the most important thing. The main thing is the theater. They strive to make a colorful show out of each production: the action of “Carmen” is transferred to modern times, and coffee is served during the performance of the Coffee Cantata. Here they love not themselves in art and not art in itself, but the viewer. And therefore they do not hesitate to invite him to the temple of the high - operatic! - art, like in a booth - with somersaults and antics, songs, dances and bread and salt. God forbid these acrobats fall from the wire they are walking on - they may end up next to the Variety Theater. However, so far the calculation has proven to be accurate. Tickets to Helikon cannot be purchased a month in advance. Not the last Western directors come to work here.
“The Bat” is an operetta. At Helikon, the opera house, they were not ashamed of this and staged a masquerade ball from “Die Fledermaus” at the Count of Orleans. Everything is staged on a grand scale: with vodka and champagne for participants and spectators. Various guests perform. First, they invited workers from related theaters: the Bolshoi and Operetta. Then they separated. The guests of honor in the latest version of “The Bat” are Gennady Khazanov and Joseph Kobzon. Famous visitors are taken out of the hall like rabbits from a magician's hat. All together it doesn't look much like an opera house performance, but it looks a lot like a show that looks very bad on a TV screen late at night.
"Bat"
March 13, Fri, 0.05-1.05 TV Center