It’s official: Gergiev gets an extra opera house
mainEarlier this year we reported that President Putin had gifted his pal Valery a new opera house. The Primorsky Opera and Ballet Theatre, inauguarated in October 2013 on the Pacific coast, is now to be run from the Baltic coast by the Marinsky Theatre in St Petersburg.
Today it was announced that the merger will take effect on January 1, 2016, after which date the Primorsky Theatre will be known as Marinsky 4.
Its director will be the mezzo-soprano Larissa Diadkova but productions and casts will be imported unchanged from St Petersburg.
I’m second to nobody in my dislike of Putin and being troubled by Gergiev’s willingness to support his foreign adventures. But in an expensive business like opera, there’s actually a good business case to be made to amortize the high fixed costs of opera productions over multiple stages in this manner.
Care to elaborate?
I find this new arrangement baffling, what with 7 time zones separating the operation and the loss of identity in Vladivostok.