The Bolshoi Theater opened its 248th season: a storm is coming according to Shakespeare

The Bolshoi Theater opens its 248th season with Modest Mussorgsky’s opera “Boris Godunov” on the Historical Stage. And before the opening, as always, there was a meeting of the troupe, at which the results of the past season were summed up, plans for the upcoming one were announced, the artists who joined the troupe were introduced, awards were presented from the Board of Trustees, and the best workers were recognized.

For the new season, everything is polished to a shine, and the auditorium of the historic building shines with whiteness and gilding. Employees and artists returned from vacation on September 9, and many began preparations at the end of August: after the rest, the Bolshoi dancers need time to get into shape. The first ballet performance is just around the corner. The ballet “Spartacus” will take place on September 20 and 21, followed by “Swan Lake” on September 23 and 24. Here we are waiting for the debut of 19-year-old dancer Daniil Potaptsev. He is the first at the Bolshoi Theater to graduate from the Eifman Academy. Last season he already danced James in La Sylphide, and in the summer he successfully represented the Bolshoi Theater in the television project The Bolshoi Ballet.

In the hall are theater stars, newcomers who will work at the Bolshoi starting this season. There are as many as 21 graduates of ballet schools enrolled. They are graduates of not only the Moscow Academy of Choreography, but also the Academy of Russian Ballet. Vaganova. A foreigner has also joined the ballet troupe – an Italian dancer, a graduate of the Academy at La Scala. Among the newcomers is the golden winner of the famous Moscow International Competition of Ballet Artists and Choreographers Makar Mikhalkin, who, despite being invited to the Mariinsky Theater as a soloist, chose the Bolshoi, and although he has only been enrolled in the corps de ballet on October 8, he will dance the main role of Lucien D’Hervilly in the Grand Pas from the ballet Paquita.

At 12.01, under camera flashes, General Director Vladimir Urin, artistic director of the ballet troupe Makhar Vaziev and Andrei Kostin, who is to present the awards of the Board of Trustees, enter the auditorium.

“There will be, there will be a movie,” says Vladimir Urin, and according to the tradition that has come into use since the time the general director came to the theater, the gathering of the troupe begins with a small film – an ironic digest of the main events of the creative and behind-the-scenes life of the past season. The video sequence of the kapustnik film, as always, consisted of cuts of rehearsals, premieres of performances, anniversary evenings shown during the season, and the voice acting – gags and jokes from Soviet film comedies, such as Rina Zelenaya’s immortal phrase from the comedy “Girl without an Address”: “A Soviet girl should boldly walk in what We implement.” A special feature of this film, dedicated to the theme of fashion, one of the authors of which, as always, was Irina Chernomura, was made up of miniatures by Arkady Raikin. It was in the voice of this brilliant artist that the general director of the Bolshoi spoke in the film.

After the twenty-minute film, the theater managers take their seats on the presidium. The Russian Minister of Culture was not at the gathering, but she sent a video greeting to the Bolshoi Theater staff.

General Director Vladimir Urin begins his speech with sad events. He asks the audience to honor the memory of two Bolshoi Theater employees who passed away in the last two weeks: opera singer Maxim Pasteur and Bolshoi Theater teacher-tutor Svetlana Adyrkhaeva. And then he moves on to the immediate affairs of the Bolshoi, starting with numbers and stating that the past season was one of the most difficult in the life of the theater. True, he sadly joked: “And then it turns out that the next year was even more difficult.”

“We have lived through a difficult year, and yet I would like to name just a few numbers. We showed the number of performances that we were supposed to show – 679! In fact, this is a huge number. If you take away weekends, vacations, holidays, and so on, it turns out that almost every day there were two or even three performances.

At the same time, as always, he got into a spat with the artistic director of the ballet troupe, Mahar Vaziev, about the priorities of opera or ballet: “Every time we make plans, we carefully calculate so that the number of ballets and operas is the same.” Next, the general director, in the absence of a musical director in the theater, whose duties he has assumed, introduces the troupe to the plans of the opera and musical groups for the upcoming season, which, however, are already known. The Bolshoi regularly announces them at the end of each season, although this, of course, is not without inevitable adjustments.

So, in the upcoming 248th season we expect six opera premieres (three of them will take place on the B.A. Pokrovsky Chamber Stage) and three ballet premieres. The season of premieres on the Historic Stage on November 16 will open with “Adriana Lecouvleur” by Francesco Cilea. As stage director – Evgeny Pisarev (conductor – Artem Abashev, conductor – Philip Selivanov). Two weeks later – a new opera premiere. This time on the Bolshoi Chamber Stage. On November 30, two operas will be shown here at once – “The Son of a Mandarin” by Cesar Cui and “The Nightingale” by Igor Stravinsky. Moreover, the latter is a joint project of the Bolshoi Theater with the Puppet Theater named after. Obraztsova (stage director – Alexey Frandetti, conductor – Alexey Vereshchagin). The Bolshoi’s first spring premiere is Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin on the New Stage. Film director Sergei Ursulyak will try his hand at opera for the first time as a stage director (produced by Philip Selivanov). Another big opera premiere, “Samson and Delilah” by Saint-Saëns (directed by Adolphe Shapiro, staged by Artem Abashev), is scheduled for May. And finally, two more premieres on the Chamber stage. At the end of April, the premiere of an opera for children set to the music of contemporary composer Andrei Rubtsov “Peter Pan” (director – Nina Chusova, conductor – the composer himself) is due to take place. And the season will conclude with “Pagliacci” by Leoncavallo (conductor-producer – Anton Grishanin, production director – Hans-Joachim Frei).

On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the world premiere and the 200th anniversary of the birth of A.N. Ostrovsky, there is another unusual co-production to which the general director pays special attention. In March 1873, in three weeks, at the request of the playwright himself, Tchaikovsky wrote music for Ostrovsky’s extravaganza fairy tale “The Snow Maiden.” The premiere on May 11 of the same year took place at the Bolshoi Theater because the Maly Theater was under renovation. And now, a century and a half later, on February 8, this spring fairy tale by Ostrovsky will be shown on the Bolshoi stage. Leading artists of the Maly Theater will perform the play together with the choir and orchestra of the Bolshoi Theater (director – Alexey Dubrovsky, conductor – Ivan Nikiforochkin).

Makhar Vaziev lists the ballet plans, also with the same caveat: “I do not rule out that something may appear, something will be added, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” Ballet plans were partially carried over from the previous season. So the first to be shown on December 14 is “The Duty,” the premiere of the ballet “The Queen of Spades” that was moved from last season. Choreographer Yuri Posokhov did not have time to prepare the ballet. Composer Yuri Krasavin, who wrote the music for this ballet in the neighborhood of not just anyone but Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky himself, also submitted his score late. “The work has already begun, we have already done quite a lot, but the main work is ahead,” the ballet artistic director informs about the progress of the rehearsal process. Note that for Yuri Posokhov, “The Queen of Spades” will be the seventh production at his native Bolshoi Theater. Previously, the ex-premier of the Bolshoi, now working in the USA, staged his ballets here such as “Magritomania”, “Cinderella”, “Classical Symphony”, “Hero of Our Time”, “Nureyev”, “The Seagull”. The conductor of the first ballet premiere of the 248th season will be Pavel Klinichev.

Another completely new ballet, also to the music of Yuri Krasavin, will be “The Tempest” based on Shakespeare’s play of the same name, which will be staged by choreographer Vyacheslav Samodurov, and the stage director will again be Pavel Klinichev. It is scheduled for the end of the season (premiere July 4). Samodurov has also already staged ballets at the Bolshoi. One unsuccessful – “Ondine”, and one more than successful – “Dancemania” to the music of the same Krasavin. Another large-scale premiere of the next season will be the legendary ballet “Romeo and Juliet” to the music of Prokofiev – one of the most popular ballets of the 20th century. “This is one of our best drama ballets,” states Mahar Khasanovich.

“Romeo and Juliet” directed by Sergei Radlov and Leonid Lavrovsky, which ran on the Bolshoi stage for almost 40 years, is a real brand performance of the Bolshoi Theater. It was with him that, after the troupe’s 1956 tour in London, the world fame of the company began, which began to be called the Bolshoi Ballet throughout the world. The last time Radlov-Lavrovsky’s “Romeo and Juliet” was revived was on December 25, 1995, under the directorship of Vladimir Vasiliev. This time, the choreographer’s son, Mikhail Leonidovich Lavrovsky, will become the choreographer-producer, and Anton Grishanin will become the director-conductor. In the difficult political situation that has arisen in the world, in conditions of import substitution, the traditional and decades-tested repertoire of the Bolshoi Theater is more indispensable than ever.