Breaking: Putin orders Gergiev to take over the Bolshoi
NewsThe Russian state agency Tass reports that President Vladimir Putin today told the Mariinsky Theatre chief Valery Gergiev to merge his theatre with Moscow’s Bolshoi, with himself as director of both.
Putin mentioned that the Directorate of Imperial Theaters was under single governance under the Russian Empire from 1786 to 1917.
Putin made his remarks at a conference of Russian artists, where he attacked discrimination against Russian culture in the West and likened it to censorship in Nazi Germany.
If Gergiev were to go along with the Putin lan, it would mean the removal of Vladimir Urin, head of the Bolshoi, who has been mildly critical of Putin’s war in the Ukraine.
The West has every right to protest the war. But the treatment of Russian artists, has been unethical and disgusting.
“Special operation”, dear. You slipped.
LOL
This is what Mr Putin calls a ‘fundraiser’.
Of course, there’s no irony at all making Nazi Germany comparisons in his bid to control the arts for political means.
The wording was not that of an order, but a “suggestion”. We all understand that this type of a suggestion there is the same as a done deal, but it can’t be called an order. Presumably this is compensation and a reward for being canceled in the West and for being a loyal propagandist.
Urin’s contract has just been extended for another five years, not sure about his removal unless his position will be eliminated in this restructuring…Bad news for the Bolshoi from any viewpoint.
I suspect a rose by any other name in Russia is an order from Putin.
“Putin … attacked discrimination against Russian culture in the West and likened it to censorship in Nazi Germany.”
The man has nerve. What’s really sad is that the Western woke is so hopelessly brainwashed they might even believe him. Does the woke never wonder what became of the Western artists who had jobs and gigs in Russia?
When will the West understand that Putin isn’t “playing by the rules”? There’s no reason for the West to play by the rules either.
“the Directorate of Imperial Theaters was under single governance under the Russian Empire from 1786 to 1917”
That’s Putin, he dreams of 1786 glory but reproduces 1917 misery.
In 1 month, he has set Russia back by 30 years. The flight of the young and educated, the brain drain to the West, will have lasting effects for generations.
Under Putin, Russia is heading straight towards being a peasant country of pensioners spending ever more rubles on ever less food.
There will be no wealth for “Imperial Theaters” or opera or ballet.
The woke was howling “he was stripped of work and income” just a few weeks back. Yeah. Stripped naked, poor little he, just with his 150 million estate in Italy, his estate in Russia, and his Mariinsky job to feed him, now the Bolshoi too. When I think how much taxpayer money was wasted on him and his mediocrity… Never mind, let’s go on wasting on Currentzis.
“Never mind, let’s go on wasting on Currentzis.”
This is a great comment. Currentzis — yet another HUGE mediocrity!!
Everyone cheered Dudamel for siding with the United States against Venezuela. He took money and the approval of his Hollywood friends. Now he’s alone. Many, including President Maduro, call him a traitor. Gergiev has shown character.
Showing character is possible when there is an alternative. Haven’t seen any alternatives for VG.
These two worth each other!! One mediocrity is worse than another.
He asks, asks…no need to order. can we assume G want to help in the war effort against nazism?
G was born too late to help in the war effort against Nazism. And, uh, shouldn’t you write “special operation”?
Oh dear, Putin has no idea of how to run theatres especially when they are miles apart hopefully Gergiev will say no but then…………? Maybe he will lose both if he doesn’t toe the line.
“Putin mentioned that the Directorate of Imperial Theaters was under single governance under the Russian Empire from 1786 to 1917.”
In case anyone needed more evidence that Putin is a megalomaniac, and how he views culture as a political tool.
Well, I guess he has more time now that he’s persona non grata outside Russia and Belarus, but kind of unfortunate for the Bolshoy, which deserves an independent identity.
Gergiev go along? I fear that is his default position.
So now the great Russian orchestras learn how shortchanged the rest of the world has been all these years.
https://manandculture.com/2022/03/why-cultural-polarization-threatens-americas-national-security/
Good summary, no solution to the problem. One would expect common sense to prevail but I don’t see it happen, they are so busy tearing each other to pieces over imagined grievances they don’t even realize they have a common problem. This is what you get when you reduce education to a box ticking exercise. The world churns out more university graduates than ever, year after year, all of them the result of box ticking education.
Qué vert
Qué vergüenza
If Gergiev were to go along with the Putin plan… well he has burned all of his bridges elsewhere, so … what, fired by everyone else and just say no to Putin… doubtful.
Well, at least they’ll have their house soprano (the one with the misbegotten Austrian citizenship and the hots for Dear Leader) in the family.
What would we do without readers’ comments?
In one of our local papers, readers are asking the government to strip this soprano of Austrian citizenship because she fails in one task required of everyone else: the ability to speak German at the level of a ninth year student.
Rebuilding the benevolent glory of empire through bombing neighbouring countries, trying to convince them to re-enter the fold of the motherland, where life is so much better. It’s down the rabbit hole on a hughe scale, into the world where everything is upside-down. No wonder Gergiev is happy there, serving a murderous dictator, a rare politician ‘who cares about art’ as he had said about Putin a couple of years ago.
Vladimir Urin will be fortunate if the only thing he loses is his top position at the Bolshoi.
As for Gergiev, he hasn’t got that much going for him these days, so he could use another job.
I think Putin is extremely weak and coward
Think again!!! The whole world is watching in AWE and FEAR!! For a wrong reason, but VVP ain’t weak, nor is he a coward! He is a War Criminal, yes!
Just goes to show how far Putin’s tentacles reach into every corner of Russian society, and how appropriate it was for Gergiev to be stripped of his contracts globally. The putrefaction of Russia will continue for as a long as Putin remains in power, and those who defend him need to keep pegs on their noses.
But but what about all those saying politics and the arts should be kept separate… ah the irony
Sure, but not when the world is on the edge of a nuclear Armageddon.
The west does not reject Russian music or Gergiev. The current situation is very unfortunate, the sanctions and all, but Gergiev is widely accepted as perhaps the most brilliant conductor on the planet, and Russian composers (think “the five”) are some of the most revered.
“Gergiev is widely accepted as perhaps the most brilliant conductor on the planet”
Gergiev can be very good in an extremily limited part of the repertoire (Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky, DSCH), if he’s having a good day. His good days were getting further apart with each passing year.
Muahaha. Tell Putin to send in a better keyboard warrior next time, you lack finesse. I have seldom laughed so hard. Always this cracked advertising of the “greatness” of Russian “artists”, and the “greatness” of national Russian culture, a national culture that began to emerge in earnest just in the 1850’s. Until then Russia used to copy diligently Western culture in everything from architecture to painting to music to lit. Russia continued to copy Western culture even after 1850 but less systematically. Then the Soviet Union came with its own “culture”, a culture even modern Russians look at with embarrassment, and the rest of the world with contempt.
Western and Southern Europe has been centuries ahead of Russia in everything from science to arts, which explains the desperation of Russian “artists” (and a few artists, G not belonging to this category) to perform in the West. No one is desperate for gigs in Russia.
Sorry, both of your statements are WRONG!
There always were and are great artists and scientists from Russia, and yes, there are Western artists who always performed and wanted to perform in Russia. Not now and probably not in the next 20–30 years. But life goes on.
@Nick
Perhaps you believe Ancient Art, Byzantine art, the Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassicism, Romanticism, and Naturalism/Realism originated in Russia? I don’t think you will find many educated people to share your belief. Russia jumped on the _bandwagon_ of most of these arts periods, but they were never forerunners in anything, and were never unique in anything in the modern period, with the exception of keeping serfs, and the Soviet “culture”, both nothing to be proud of.
The Russian Empire/Soviet Union/Russian Federation did produce great artists (not all of them Russians), a fact I acknowledged in my comment by calling them artists without double quotation marks, but none of them among Putin’s exports to the West of the last decades. Putin’s exports are proficient in only one discipline – walking the tightrope that allows them to milk both sides, the Western and the Russian side.
Give me examples of Western artists who performed in Russia before the invasion of Ukraine, and who whine in the media of their lost opportunities. Sure Western artists got occasional gigs in Russia, _but they don’t whine_ about lost opportunities. This is a big difference. Only Russians whine about their lost opportunities in the West.
You must be joking. Grossly overrated conductor. Will not be missed in the West.
Have you EVER listened to “brilliant” conductors?!? You have not seen any decent conductor in your life if Gergiev is”brilliant”
“….Gergiev is widely accepted as perhaps the most brilliant conductor on the planet….”
Denis, you are delusional. Get help.
Date: 26th March 2022.
I’m sure that the vast majority of Russian musicians across all genres are horrified by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. I can only speculate on conductor Valery Gergiev’s current state of mind in light of the harsh international criticism he has received during the past month.
Is there a comparison, however tenuous, with the situation composer Richard Strauss found himself in when Hitler embarked upon global domination and purification of the German “race?”
These are unfathomably deep issues and, maybe, Gergiev is just out of his depth and floundering desperately for something to restore faith in Russia’s positive, internationally revered cultural legacy.
That is a wrong comparison. Long before WW II, Strauss got into conflict with the nazis because he had very different plans for music life than they had. At the time, although nazi rhetoric was openly assertive and awful, he did not take that very seriously, and the invasion in Poland had not as yet taken place. With Gergiev that is very different, he has openly supported Russia’s invasion.
“Strauss, who got irritated by the internationalising trends and eroding of standards of German music life in the twenties, and deplored the then fashionable hard-edged ‘modern musics’, and who had not taken the trouble to give real attention to political questions of post-1918 society, was dismayed about the postwar government’s attitude towards concert life. So, when the nazis took power in 1933, he saw an opportunity – as number one of the eminent German composers with authority in musical matters – to work for the improvement of national music life.”
https://subterraneanreview.blogspot.com/2018/10/strauss-and-nazis.html
“Russia’s positive, internationally revered cultural legacy” is a trope put in circulation mostly by Putin’s propaganda. Check real Arts history, for a change.
Gergiev is an embarrassing and servile sycophant. That is HIS problem and HIS problem alone. Whatever he does or says will not influence the Mafia don who runs Russia. But it seems to have damaged the maestro’s reputation outside Russia.
Well, I guess he has some time on his hands. . .
Please don’t call the country ‘the Ukraine’; it makes it sound like a region, like in the Russian ‘na Ukraini’ (‘on the edge’), rather than a sovereign state.
Two very tiny men who can hear only very loud noises will never make a bolshoi (great) contribution to mankind.
I have admired Valery Gergiev for years, as an artist and as a maestro. Although he has supported Putin and accumulated enormous wealth, he has experienced the freedom of the West. I sincerely hope Gergiev will change his colors when Putin is finally banished ! It shouldn’t be long.
“I sincerely hope Gergiev will change his colors when Putin is finally banished”
LOL. I think you don’t realize what you wrote. I expect he’ll try. He has no conscience.
Hoorah!
Another once great Russian musical organisation to be ruined by Gergiev and his total inability to rehearse anything.
Heil Putin, heil the great leader – a country with the GDP now a quarter lower than Italy and shrinking fast.
Put “Z” on the stage curtains of Bolshoi and Mariinski.
Let’s see the equally inept rehearser Correntzis join him with his crappy little orchestra.
Send Netrebko to croak out her retirement with them too.
We want to see it all play out and laugh at them.
Well, you cannot expect Mr. Shoigu to run everything, especially with his recent heart problems.
“Gergiev and his total inability to rehearse anything”. The performances are the rehearsals. Gergiev only conducts works every orchestra musician has played a million times, so it’s not like they need a lot of rehearsing. It’s why it used to be best to go to the second night.
More likely an economical decision.
They just have to pay for one director now.
Quality will go down or become “agressive” like in Soviet times.
Good. I will play Shostakovich’s cantata about Musicologist Number One for the occasion.
V.Gergiev s joining Putin s propaganda machine would be /is a confirmation of the harshest criticism of him in the Western media.
With these sanctions, he’ll be driving a Moskvitch and shopping at the old Soviet GUM store soon enough…
Yes I’m sure this was Putin’s idea….
I don’t think it was an order, I believe it was stated as a suggestion.
Do notice Domingo in the middle.
Maybe Gergiev will agree to Putin’s “Suggestion” provided Domingo is his Artistic Advisor at Bolshoi.
Putin complaining of censorship. That’s rich.
Vladimir Urin “mildly critical” of Putin’s war in the Ukraine??? MILDLY CRITICAL? Do you have any idea of what it means for a public figure in his position to have signed an open letter condemning this war??? By doing it, this man has risked his LIFE – as well as the lives of his family members. For heaven’s sake! People in the West should be able to see beyond their overwhelming privileges.
Yes, it was mildly critical, and no amount of question marks from you will make it anything but mildly critical. He was one of the signatories of an anti-war protest posted on social media. The war wasn’t even named, the wording was so generic, it could apply to any armed conflict going on anywhere on Earth. He was also one of the signatories of the letter supporting Putin’s war in Crimea.
There were Russian artists in the past who defected. Those artists indeed risked their lives. No one demands defection from Urin, but no one will make a hero of him either.
As to enjoying “overwhelming privileges”, Urin could write a treatise about the subject.
Why is everybody so angry nowadays????
The right man in the right spot. An elderly drunkard long past his prime seems like the right choice.
I don’t understand this sniggering at Gergiev. What have you achieved in life yourself? Gergiev has done much more good than you.