The artistic director of the Maly Theater of Russia, Yuri Solomin, died at the age of 89.

At the age of 89, after serious illness and a recent stroke, the artistic director of the Academic Maly Theater of Russia, People’s Artist of the Soviet Union, Yuri Solomin, died.

The day before, Yuri Solomin was discharged from the hospital, where he spent the last few weeks after a stroke that happened to him in the courtyard of his house in November. After being discharged, the director of the Maly Theater Tamara Mikhailova told the press that the artistic director of the theater had recovered and would soon begin fulfilling his official duties. But this was just wishful thinking. Several years ago, the authorities signed an indefinite contract with Yuri Solomin to manage Maly – thus emphasizing the special status of the artistic director, regardless of his age and actual capacity. But now this agreement, as if opposing the laws of existence, has lost force.

Yuri Solomin actually spent seventy years at the Maly Theater.

This period rightfully includes the years of study spent at the Shchepkinsky School, which is inextricably linked with the theater. For its best students, it determines the path to the Maly Theater, where, according to its own unwritten codes, one should stay forever. A native of the city of Chita, born into a family of music teachers and learning about the Maly Theater and its school from a television program, Yuri Solomin did not contradict this rule: having been accepted into the Maly, he remained there until the end and spent half of this life – thirty-five years – in the position artistic director, receiving it simultaneously with the title of People’s Artist of the USSR, and according to the results of the troupe’s vote. And he didn’t part with the Shchepkinsky School: Solomin became one of the most productive and experienced teachers, and many actors in today’s Maly Theater troupe will have to say goodbye not only to their boss, but also to their teacher. “You need to leave a piece of your heart on stage,” he reminded the actors.

Of course, over so many decades, Yuri Solomin has played many roles on the Maly stage, gradually moving from episodic to main ones.

The semi-museum status of the academic “Ostrovsky House” dictated and dictates the special position of the actor on this stage – the actor in conjunction with the text of the play. A special type of theatricality has always been required from the masters here, seemingly suitable for any dramatic material. Yuri Solomin, who had excellent mastery of different registers of a complex acting instrument, masterfully “appropriated” any words for himself, and knew a lot about both the softness and hardness of stage designs, looked great on the academic stage – be it Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich, Cyrano de Bergerac or the presenter in a dramatization “Virgin lands” of Secretary General Brezhnev. Unfortunately, he has not appeared on stage at all for several years, and his last significant role (although there were new works later) was Famusov in “Woe from Wit” by Sergei Zhenovach, but that premiere is already almost a quarter of a century old. So one can only once again regret that administrative duties most likely took away many opportunities for viewers to see the great actor.

Yuri Solomin’s filmography is also quite impressive, but the most famous roles that made him popular outside the circle of theater audiences were played in the 70s of the last century.

First of all, this is Captain Koltsov in the adventure historical detective story “His Excellency’s Adjutant”, innkeeper Emil in “An Ordinary Miracle” by Mark Zakharov, Heinrich Eisenstein in “Die Fledermaus” and later, at the end of the Soviet Union, KGB Colonel Slavin in the television series “TASS is Authorized to Declare” ” They show that the actor had a truly enviable range, and the “positive heroes” who served as an example for young people were as convincing in his performances as his operetta and lyrical klutzes were charming. The world recognized Yuri Solomin thanks to Akira Kurosawa’s Oscar-winning film Dersu Uzala, where the Maly Theater actor played the role of Far East explorer Arsenyev.

But Solomin seemed to have little interest in world fame. He, a full holder of the Order of Merit for the Fatherland and a member of the public council under the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, was not a man of the world, but a man of his state, who believed that the theater should be firmly integrated into any “verticals”. In 1990-1991, Solomin even made a move into power – for a year he was the Minister of Culture of Russia. And if we characterize him as a theater politician and artistic director, then he was not just a loyalist, but a strict, convinced, consistent conservative, especially in the last couple of decades of his life. Today is the worst day to object to his views and critically analyze Maly’s dubious creative state, but there is no doubt that the theater will have to change in any case.

Esther Steinbock