After almost a decade of turmoil, uncertainty and artistic decline,
Moscow's Bolshoi Theater seems on the road to recovery. The theater, which houses
both a ballet and opera company under its venerable roof, has a newly
reorganized leadership team and has released plans
for an ambitious new season. But soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, a legendary figure
at the theater until she left for the West in 1974, says that far more drastic
changes are required.
The most recent shift at the theater was the appointment of Makvala Kasrashvili, the company's leading soprano since the early 1970s, as the Bolshoi Opera's director. But virtually all of the top positions have been shuffled. At the start of this season Alexander Vedernikov Jr., a 37-year-old son of a famous opera bass, was appointed the music director and chief conductor of the entire theater. And in the last two years, Boris Akimov, a former star of the Bolshoi Ballet, was appointed to lead that company; and Anatoly Iksanov, former director of St. Petersburg's Bolshoi Drama Theater, became the theater's general director.
A month after taking up her post, Kasrashvili recently spent a week in New York, where many opera fans still remember her first appearance during the Bolshoi's triumphant visit in 1973, as well as her Metropolitan opera debut as Tatiana in Eugene Onegin in 1979. Kasrashvili still performs with the company — in February, she sang the title role in the Bolshoi's new production of Adriana Lecouvreur — but, she said in an interview, she plans to dedicate most of her time to restoring the high standards that reigned in the Bolshoi's glory days, in the 1940s and 1950s, when the theater's magnificent red, gold and crystal hall was the center of the Soviet Union's operatic universe.
Kasrashvili has high hopes for Vedernikov, the new chief conductor. "His knowledge and understanding of the opera literature is excellent," she said. "He knows what to expect and what to demand from each singer, and he can rehearse day and night, working out every detail and nuance."
When he was appointed in August 2001, Vedernikov began to look for opportunities to make the company's repertoire more exciting. His primary innovation has been to borrow productions from other European theaters, following the example of St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Theater. Adriana Lecouvreur was borrowed from La Scala; Der Rosenkavalier arrives next season from Covent Garden. The theater is also looking for opportunities to attract important guest singers, both Russian and foreign.
Kasrashvili intends to get rid of the poor singers who joined the company in
recent years. She also said that she is working hard to create opportunities for
promising singers who have had few opportunities to sing, in part because of the
sharply reduced number of performances. The old European tradition of opera and
ballet performing under one roof and sharing one stage limits performances, of
course, and in recent years, the theater has hosted numerous visiting companies
and "special events." As a result, no more than seven opera performances a month
can be seen now during the season, which lasts from September to June.
Kasrashvili said that she will fight to restoring the number to the past
standard — about twice as many.
Money continues to be a major concern. Some invited stars are paid between $2,000 and $5,000 for a performance; on exceptional occasions, certain roles (such as the part of Turandot in the new production which will open the next season) can be paid as much as $15,000, but such an expenditure requires a special sponsorship. The members of the company are paid a fraction of that amount: $550 per performance is the highest sum, given to five or six leading singers. The funding comes mostly from the government. Last year, however, the Bolshoi established its own board of trustees — a relatively new institution in Russia. It also has corporate sponsors, among them Samsung, the Marriott-Aurora hotel and Aeroflot.
The company does not have its own academy for young singers, as the Mariinsky does, and its old training program is almost defunct. The best hope for creating a pool of well-trained singers is the new Galina Vishnevskaya Opera Center. Established by the famous soprano and the wife of Mstislav Rostropovich, the Center will open its doors on 1 September, the traditional first day of school in Russia.
The training program will accept only professional singers — women under 30, men under 35 — with a high degree of musical education. To be admitted they will undertake exams and auditions. The training program will last for two years, and take place in a new building, funded by Moscow's municipal government, with its own 350-seat theater with orchestra pit.
"I always admired Vishnevskaya," said Kasrashvili, "for her exceptional professionalism, hard work and highest standards which she applied to herself first."
For her part, however, Vishnevskaya has a much bleaker view of the state of
the company — and a more radical plan for its resurrection. She spoke
recently in New York, where she accompanied Rostropovich to his 75th birthday
celebration at Lincoln Center.
"The trouble with the Bolshoi Opera began long ago, in 1969, when the young
conductor Yuri Simonov, who had just graduated, was appointed by the government
as the chief conductor of the Bolshoi," she said. "He knew nothing about opera
and had to study a lot, so he studied on our backs and at the expense of the
Bolshoi. He stayed there for 14 years. That is how this decline started. Now the
company is full of unhappy singers. Many of them are young, but feel like
pensioners already, because they can only be on stage once every three or four
months. So they are using connections, intrigues — whatever means
possible — to make it to the stage. The morale is low. Everyone is
looking for opportunity to go anywhere else — even to some small
provincial European theater — where they can have a steady employment
and an opportunity to earn money."
How to change this situation, which Vishnevskaya called "disastrous"? "By closing the theater for renovations, which are coming anyway," she said. "They must shut down its operations for several months and fire the whole opera company. Then it will be possible to start anew — with about 40 soloists, not 140, like now, and with productions of a highest quality: no more than four Russian classics, which have been and must be our fundamental repertoire, and four western classics, like Verdi and Puccini."
Vishnevskaya suggested that a reliable contract system would establish trust between the company and its singers. "In the old Soviet days," she recalled, "we gave our whole lives for the theater earning kopeks and being treated like prisoners; thank god, these times are over." She believes that singers would want to stay at the theater if it was more stable.
"Trust me, I sang everywhere, and there is no place in the world like the
Bolshoi theater," she said. "This stage is unique. It emanates magic. This hall
gives you so much — not only acoustically, but artistically,
historically: it resonates, it enchants, it responds. I have never felt happier
in my life than on this stage."
