There was no official announcement, just a post on Telegram: “Instead of the announced performances of the ballet about Rudolf Nureyev, ‘Spartacus’ will be shown,” the Moscow Bolshoi announced last Sunday evening. Without explanation. However, the cancellation, which also affects the opera “Don Pasquale”, speaks volumes: the favor of the hour of war plays into the hands of all those who have long wanted to ban unpleasant productions and unpleasant theater people from the stage. In the case of Donizetti’s opera “Don Pasquale,” the director Timofey Kulyabin, who has repeatedly opposed the Ukraine offensive and is now in the West, is affected.
In “Nurejev” several motifs come together. On the one hand there is the director and Regime opponent Kirill Serebrennikov, who premiered the commissioned work together with the choreographer Yuri Possokhov in 2017 after months of quarrels including a postponement of the premiere. The theater maker, who has been persecuted by the Putin state for years and recently sentenced to probation, is currently in the West and has repeatedly criticized the Kremlin’s course. On the other hand, the “Nurejev” subject – a gay dancer who fled to the West – is a provocation against the background of the homophobic and bellicose propaganda of the Russian power apparatus and has been a thorn in the side of hardliners since the premiere. “Spartacus”, staged by Yuri Grigorovich at the Bolshoi in 1968, tells the story of the brave leader of the ancient slave uprising: from the Kremlin’s point of view, a heroic saga suitable for PR.
One waits in vain for reasons for the program change, the theater remains silent
At first glance it may seem irritating that Bolshoi general director Vladimir Urin is readjusting the repertoire in this way. After all, right at the beginning of the war, the seventy-five-year-old launched an appeal for peace in solidarity with numerous colleagues from the cultural sector. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin retaliated by handing his loyal henchman Valery Gergiev, head of St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky, the reins of the Bolshoi as well. Urine obviously understood this threatening gesture and acted accordingly. Especially since the exodus of prominent dancers, including the star ballerina Olga Smirnova, who emigrated to Amsterdam, caused him additional difficulties.
Bolshoi director Vladimir Urin launched an appeal for peace at the beginning of the war, and now he is following the Kremlin’s wishes.
(Photo: Pavel Golovkin/AP)
The man at the head of the Bolshoi is now trying to get his house and its 3,400 employees to safety. And that means: carrying out a land consolidation that meets the intentions of strict nationalist to chauvinist circles. “The end of Sodom,” is how the oligarch and chairman of the Tsargard Media Group, Konstantin Malofeev, hailed the “Nurejev” dismissal via Telegram. Some ticket buyers, who should do without “Nurejev” and watch “Spartacus” instead, asked for a reason for the program change on the same messenger service. In vain. The Bolshoi remained silent.
At the end of April, Vladimir Urin let the public know in a TASS interview that he was carrying out an “import substitution” because the “current situation required such adjustments”. In other words: the game plan is reduced to local products. At the same time, Urin expressed the hope that planned co-productions and guest performances would be postponed and that the cultural bridges to the West would not collapse completely.
In 2023, the Bolshoi Ensemble is scheduled to make a guest appearance in Hamburg, as a highlight to mark the farewell to ballet director John Neumeier. Whether Moscow’s premium company can really arrive and show more than “Spartacus”? Unthinkable at the moment.