Breaking: Valery Gergiev to open Russian Olympics
mainIzvestia reports that four artists have been chosen ‘by tender’ to open the Winter Olympics at Sochi. The results will be announced on CDecember 13 but the paper has been tipped the wink on the favourites. They are (no surprises):
Valery Gergiev, Yuri Bashmet, Denis Matsuev and the Mariinsky ballerina, Ulyana Lopatkina.
We guess Gidon Kremer didn’t make the shortlist.
I cannot imagine anyone better than Gergiev to open the Russian Olympics. He has done wonders for classical music there!
Surely “конкурс” just means “competition”, not “tender”!
Even choosing artists for the opening ceremony by “competition” seems unusual, but to have done so by “tender” would have been truly bizarre!
Hardly a surprise, I’d say. Gergiev did come to Vancouver in 2010 to close those Olympics and preview Sochi.
The article in ИЗВЕСТИЯ actually states that the competition is for “organizing” opening and closing ceremonies (possibly meaning directing and/or producing them) while the main starry participants have been known for months.