Results of the decade of Vladimir Urin at the Bolshoi Theater

The appointment of Vladimir Urin to the Bolshoi Theater was much more sudden than the current loss of position. In July 2013, Bolshoi General Director Anatoly Iksanov was fired without any official explanation on the eve of a major ballet tour in London (see “Kommersant” dated July 10, 2013). Vladimir Urin, who at that time headed the successful Stanislavsky Music Theater, was considered by the country’s authorities to be the only person capable of coping with such an administrative monster as the main state theater. The result is evaluated Tatiana Kuznetsova And Sergei Khodnev.

In many ways, Vladimir Urin’s course turned out to be a continuation of the period of transformation into which the Bolshoi Theater entered under the directorship of Anatoly Iksanov (2000–2013). True, adjusted for changing circumstances. Urin no longer had to deal with the post-Soviet confusion and uncertainty that reigned in the Bolshoi by 2000, nor with the many-year epic reconstruction of the historical building by Osip Bove and Alberto Cavos. Starting from 2005, when the building was closed for reconstruction, and until the grand opening of the Historical Stage in the fall of 2011, Anatoly Iksanov had only one stage at his disposal – the New one (opened in 2003). It was there that the main, most eventful performances of Iksanov’s time were performed: “The Flying Dutchman” staged by Peter Konvichny (2004), “Eugene Onegin” (2006) and “Wozzeck” (2009) staged by Dmitry Chernyakov, the ballet “Bright Stream” staged Alexey Ratmansky (2003).

Under Vladimir Urin, the Bolshoi Theater (with the addition of the former Boris Pokrovsky Chamber Musical Theater in 2018) acquired a Chamber stage and, at the behest of the state, concerns about creating a branch in Kaliningrad. However, the director confidently stated that the Chamber Stage should have a separate artistic director, and the branch in Kaliningrad should also get on its feet and live its own life, which the Bolshoi Theater will not directly control.

There were enough events for the Moscow stages. In the 2010s, the Bolshoi Theater finally became a full-fledged participant in the world opera process. The theater continued to work in joint productions with the English National Opera and with the festival in Aix-en-Provence, to which a number of other international institutions added: one of the most brilliant operatic works of the Bolshoi over the last five years, Rossini’s “Journey to Reims” staged by Damiano Michieletto , appeared in Moscow in collaboration with the Dutch National Opera (Amsterdam), the Royal Danish Opera (Copenhagen) and Opera Australia (Sydney).

In the eyes of the mass public, the Bolshoi gained a bright star on its fuselage by getting Anna Netrebko (Manon Lescaut, directed by Adolphe Shapiro, December 2016) in its performance. To a more discerning audience, the theater demonstrated, firstly, operas of the 20th century that were rare for our stages – here, without a doubt, the main achievement is Britten’s Billy Budd, directed by David Alden (2016). Secondly and most importantly, there is an exceptional selection of period operas. First of all, Handel’s – “Rodelinda” (in the version by Richard Jones, 2015), “Alcina” (in the sensational production of Katie Mitchell, 2017), “Ariodante” (old direction again by David Alden). But there was also Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas (directed by Vincent Huguet, 2019).

In terms of the director’s level, all these performances were very different, but what cannot be taken away from them is the versatility and flexibility of the orchestral work. Under Tugan Sokhiev, who was the chief conductor of the Bolshoi in 2014–2022, the orchestra quite effectively mastered not only the basic repertoire of the 19th – early 20th centuries, but also the same baroque scores (fortunately, stage conductors were also invited of excellent world caliber – including Andrea Marcona in the case of Alcina and Gianluca Capuano in the case of Ariodante).

The pinnacle of international operatic cooperation was the unprecedented plan for three joint productions of the Bolshoi with the New York Metropolitan Opera (Aida, Salome and Lohengrin), of which only two performances were actually realized. “Salome” by Richard Strauss, in the version of the great opera director Klaus Guth, was released at the Bolshoi in the covid year of 2021, and “Lohengrin” by Wagner, directed by François Girard, received its Moscow premiere exactly on February 24, 2022.

Vladimir Urin inherited a ballet troupe that was quite successful in terms of repertoire and personnel, with a significant exception: in January 2013, artistic director Sergei Filin was attacked by a criminal, was practically blinded by sulfuric acid, and had been undergoing treatment for six months without particularly encouraging prognosis. The general director, mercifully retaining the position of artistic director for Filin, handed over the reins of ballet management to the experienced head of the ballet troupe Galina Stepanenko, and he himself resumed negotiations with Mahar Vaziev (Anatoly Iksanov persuaded him to change the La Scala ballet to the Bolshoi ballet). In 2016, they were crowned with success: St. Petersburg resident Mahar Vaziev became the artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet.

But from 2013 to 2016, the Bolshoi Ballet was by no means idle, showing four full-length ballets; among them were the world premieres of The Taming of the Shrew and A Hero of Our Time, which became repertoire hits. As it turned out later, Vladimir Urin understood modern ballet almost better than his academic artistic director Vaziev, and it was not without reason that from 1997 to 2021, together with his wife Irina Chernomurova, he headed the international dance festival Dance Inversion.

Unlike his predecessor Iksanov, who entrusted ballet matters to specialists, Urin adhered to the principle that the general director was responsible, among other things, for the theater’s repertoire, so the Bolshoi ballet poster was formed with his active and direct participation.

In just ten years of Ura’s leadership, the Bolshoi Ballet presented 38 productions. Of these, eight world premieres of full-length ballets (including such box office hits as The Taming of the Shrew, A Hero of Our Time, Nureyev, The Seagull, Orlando, The Master and Margarita) and eight one-act exclusives ( three of them are high level). The rest of the performances – transfers of world heritage, Western ballet novelties, reconstructions and revivals of ballets that are fundamental to the theater – also invariably did well at the box office.

During the second five-year period of Urin’s directorship, the balance between classics and avant-garde clearly tilted towards classical dance. Actually, there was no real avant-garde in the theater, because William Forsythe, Jiri Kylian, Paul Lightfoot and Sol Leon have long been ranked among the classics of the 20th century. But still, the modern classics of Alexei Ratmansky and Yuri Posokhov allowed the Bolshoi to maintain its reputation as an advanced theater in the world, and the exclusive dramatic ballets of Edward Klug helped to maintain the domestic public in the belief that they were being shown modern choreography.

General director Urin managed to cope with the pandemic that devastated the theater halls, even showing the world premiere of four modern Western productions at its height. Even the SVO, which decimated the theater’s repertoire (in the ballet part, it was necessary to remove from the playbill all the productions of Alexei Ratmansky, who took an irreconcilable pro-Ukrainian position, as well as both excellent ballets by Kirill Serebrennikov), did not force Urin to give up: he managed to extend some licenses, and to engage the best for the current season domestic choreographers. Both stage exclusive full-length ballets: Russian-American Yuri Posokhov will show “The Queen of Spades” in two weeks, Vyacheslav Samodurov will present Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” in the summer. I would, of course, like that under the new general director the Bolshoi Ballet would not lose its gained positions, but I can’t believe it: Gergiev’s Mariinsky Theater has different priorities and a different concept of existence.