Vladimir Putin spoke with the board of trustees of the Mariinsky Theater for the first time since 2017

Russian President Vladimir Putin held a meeting with members of the board of trustees of the Mariinsky Theater at the Konstantinovsky Palace in St. Petersburg. The meeting is timed to coincide with the 240th anniversary of the theater, which will be celebrated on October 5. This is the first meeting between the president and the theater’s board of trustees in six years. Before this, Putin held it in November 2017.

The President announced that the artistic director and director of the theater Valery Gergiev will talk about the results of the work, what problems need to be solved, and what is planned for the future. He thanked the management and staff of the Mariinsky Theater for ensuring that productions and performances by world-class artists are accessible to residents of the Russian regions. According to him, at the end of 2024, a branch of the Mariinsky Theater will appear in Kemerovo – in addition to three stages in St. Petersburg, stages in Vladivostok and Vladikavkaz.

Putin emphasized that the Mariinsky Theater is one of the most talented and fruitful creative teams not only in Russia, but throughout the whole world. In his opinion, this is also the merit of the members of the board of trustees. He thanked them for their assistance in the ongoing activities of the theater and in the implementation of major cultural initiatives, such as the Moscow Easter Festival and the Stars of the White Nights festival. Further, the president again spoke out that there are now attempts to abolish Russian culture. He has already expressed this thesis several times. In his opinion, “whoever takes this path robs himself.”

The priority for the theater team has always been performances in their native St. Petersburg – over the past 15 years their number has increased eight to ten times, Gergiev said. He spoke about various projects and performances of the theater – the Easter Festival, performances in Tikhvin and Pskov, the Stravinsky Festival. “We are faced with quite complex questions – we’ll talk about this briefly, but very clearly, it seems to me, a little later,” Gergiev said. After which he thanked the president and members of the board of trustees for their help. According to Gergiev, artists need support: “It has begun to remind itself more acutely today, this necessity.” Gergiev then moved on to such “necessities,” in particular, that two Mariinsky Theater halls are now being built in Vladikavkaz: “There are no state funds there and there won’t be.” After this, the open part of the meeting was interrupted.

Among the meeting participants, in addition to the president and artistic director of the theater, were Minister of Culture Olga Lyubimova, presidential adviser Vladimir Tolstoy and Governor of St. Petersburg Alexander Beglov. The meeting was attended by co-chairs of the board of trustees – the board of directors of Sberbank German Gref and advisor for corporate development at Yandex Alexey Kudrin, as well as members of the board of trustees – chairman of the board of directors of Severstal Alexey Mordashov, chief executive officer of Rosneft Igor Sechin, board of directors Gazprom Alexey Miller, Managing Partner of Trust Technologies Igor Lotakov, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Safmar Charitable Foundation Mikhail Gutseriev, Chairman of the Board of the Bank VTB» Andrey Kostin, Dean of the Faculty of Economics of St. Petersburg State University Otar Margania, General Director Russian Railways Oleg Belozerov, General Director of Surgutneftegaz Vladimir Bogdanov, President of PC Baltika Taimuraz Bolloev, Chairman of the Board of Alrosa Pavel Marinychev, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Geropharm Pyotr Rodionov and shareholder of Rocks of fire SPC Christophe Degumois.

The last time Putin met with members of the board of trustees of the Mariinsky Theater was in November 2017, and before that in December 2015. There is no list of members of the board of trustees on the Mariinsky Theater website, and a list of participants in the meeting in 2015 was published on the Kremlin website. Then at such a meeting there were more participants. For example, now the only foreign participant was Degumois (in 2015, he served as vice president of Bombardier Aerospace Business Aircraft). And then, in addition to Degmois, the participants at that time were the executive chairman of the board of directors of Bombardier Incorporated Pierre Baudouin, the adviser to the CGI company Corinne zu Zain Wittgenstein, the Minister of Culture, Youth and Social Development of the UAE Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, CEO Nestlé in Russia Maurizio Patarnello, general manager of Japan Tobacco International in Russia Antoine Ernst and others. Some representatives of Russian business who were at such a meeting in 2015 did not participate in the current meeting – for example, David Yakobashvili, Mikhail Prokhorov and others.

After the meeting of the board of trustees, which lasted about two hours, Kudrin told reporters that in the closed part of the meeting they discussed increasing support from sponsors of the Mariinsky Theater. According to him, the government and sponsors support the Mariinsky Theater, but it is planned that patrons will further increase investments. “Now the support is already considerable, so it will not increase significantly, but it will be sufficient,” he noted. Also at the meeting they talked about the development of the theater and solving the problems facing the Mariinsky Theater, since after the pandemic and other restrictions there are fewer theater tours.