TIME: Almanac 1995

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ TIME: Almanac 1995 / TIME Almanac 1995.iso / time / 072092 / 07209929.000 < prev next >

Wrap

Text File | 1994-03-25 | 5.8 KB | 127 lines

<text id=92TT1633> <title> July 20, 1992: Paying the Price of Freedom </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1992 July 20, 1992 Olympic Special </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> CULTURE, Page 76 Paying the Price of Freedom </hdr><body> The Kirov Opera barnstorms the U.S. as its chief, Valery Gergiev, confronts the dilemma of the arts in post-Soviet Russia: how to survive without subsidies By MARTHA DUFFY It's a good thing Valery Gergiev is a sturdy optimist. Gergiev is artistic director and principal conductor of St. Petersburg's Kirov Opera. His is the finest company in Russia, and it is now on its first ever U.S. visit, playing New York City's Metropolitan Opera House. All of which may sound very grand, but the reality is harrowing. For the Kirov is a company in crisis, and the swarm of challenges it faces makes it emblematic of a whole culture in crisis. The Kirov, like virtually all the major performing troupes in the former Soviet Union -- the Bolshoi and countless folk and choral groups -- is struggling to survive in a parlous new era. When the communist regime dissolved and the economy collapsed, these institutions were cast adrift. The Kirov's subsidy was cut from 95% of its budget to 35%, and it will sink lower. Gergiev has the double task of keeping his treasure functioning at all and at the same time hauling it from the timeless miasma of Soviet bureaucracy into the tough entrepreneurial world of the late 20th century. As a conductor of great skill and dark, sexy good looks, Gergiev, 39, could be getting rich on the international concert and opera circuit. But, he says, "that's not what it's about." What matters to him is the Kirov, whose past he reveres and in whose future he has militant confidence. "It will go on naturally and beautifully as it has for 200 years. It's full of energy -- lots of vitamins." He welcomes the end of the Soviet state because it gave artists like him some real freedom as well as an opening to the West. "The party leadership was stupid and dull," he says. "They could come into rehearsals and enforce artistic changes. Now I decide what we do." But the price of liberation has been high. Life under the Soviet system may have been constricted, but it was comfortable. Staffs were huge: the Kirov is a little city of 3,000 citizens that includes the world-class ballet company, also on a U.S. tour. The occasional visiting Western choreographer or director found the system byzantine, but Gergiev takes a long view: "In Russia everything is impossible, but at the end of the day, things get done." Gergiev is one of the few who read the signs of change early. Even before he got the Kirov's top job in May 1988, he was planning co-productions with European houses. That was the key: Russian arts had no choice but to look westward; as the rubles melted away and inflation sent costs soaring, survival depended on hard currency and touring. Both Russian and Western impresarios have sent a glut of performers on the road. Next year two groups currently calling themselves the Red Army Chorus will be in the U.S. Some tours have been so badly mishandled that troupes were stranded without meal money, not to speak of passage home. The Kirov -- both the opera and dance divisions -- have busily signed Western contracts. The ballet will perform The Nutcracker in Tokyo each year for the next decade. The opera, besides a major contract with Philips Records, has co-production deals going with Covent Garden and La Scala, among others. But it will not return to the U.S. until 1995: Gergiev is wisely wary of overexposure. What he has brought to the Metropolitan amounts to a portrait of a company embarking on a cultural shift. Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades and Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov are first-rate productions that offer what opera lovers want to hear: Russian classics performed with great depth of detail -- in orchestration, diction and idiomatic style. The Kirov embodies the Russian tradition of opera, which is very different from the Western one. As the maestro says, "The chorus and the orchestra are the hero. The chorus is stronger than any star, and it must be a single personality divided into a hundred parts." The third opera shows a new direction. It is Prokofiev's little known The Fiery Angel, an overwrought vision of possession and sexual hysteria. A co-production with Covent Garden, it was directed as an arresting theater piece by British experimental director David Freeman. Freeman uses gymnasts as the devils who torment the heroine, having rehearsed them in concentrated, mesmerizing animal movements that quickly steal the spotlight from the singers. Trendy? Possibly. But the production maintains its musical balance as well. To launch deals like the one with Covent Garden, Gergiev has very little help. Surrounded by old-school functionaries, he must train a staff that can do business with the West. He seems to proceed on instinct, with more than a little of the old Diaghilev in him. Often he will end a long evening on the podium with a couple of hours of nuts-and-bolts negotiating. He spends half his time on the road, but his heart is in St. Petersburg. His mission is to bring "part of our city's soul" to the rest of the world. Among his idols is Peter the Great, whose wild equestrian statue he passes every day he is at home. "It is the symbol of the city, of enormous power. Peter wanted to learn, not just to command. With great symbols and images like that, you can't feel hopeless or helpless." Gergiev may need every bit of the emperor's strength -- along with those Kirov vitamins. </body></article> </text>