Operatic and ballet productions imported from the West are becoming increasingly prominent on the repertory of the Bolshoi, Russia’s largest music theater. Local audiences met such imports with circumspection, but are now growing to like them.
Elena Zelenskaya as Leonora ("La Forza del Destino")
BOLSHOI THEATER ON BORROWING SPREE
Moscow. (Olga Sobolevskaya, RIA Novosti commentator.)
RIA Novosti [14 Feb 05]
Operatic and ballet productions imported from the West are becoming increasingly prominent on the repertory of the Bolshoi, Russia's largest music theater. Local audiences met such imports with circumspection, but are now growing to like them.
As a matter of fact, there isn't much else to check out at the Bolshoi these days. The revived Soviet-era productions may be of top quality, but they look outdated from the modern day's perspective. There are some fresh original shows, such as Dmitri Chernyakov's version of Igor Stravinsky's "The Rake's Progress," but these are far too few to build a full-scale repertory upon.
Russian audiences, who in the past may have rejected many of these borrowed productions as too bold and unconventional, are becoming increasingly open-minded about experimentation on the West's contemporary theater scene-thanks in no small measure to the arts & culture television network Kultura, bringing the latest in European and American innovations.