Russian rumours: Gergiev in Moscow raid
NewsIzvestia has reported that Valery Gergiev will be announced today as head of the Bolshoi Theatre.
The official statement is due to be made at the St. Petersburg International Cultural Forum.
He will replace Vladimir Urin, who has led the Bolshoi for ten years and ‘will leave of his own free will’.
The Bolshoi has refused to comment on this and other reports.
Gergiev, 70, has been chafing at his shrunken opportunities since his pal Putin invaded Ukraine. Shunned by the western world, he has built a Mariinsky outpost in Vladivostok and found an admiring audience in China.
But that does not satisfy his imperial ambitions.
Without world tours, the Mariinsky has been diminished to a provincial opera house of limited significance. The Bolshoi, on the other hand, is still a world brand.
Gergiev wants to run both institutions to ensure his footprint in history.
Urin alone stands in his way.
Something he has been after for a long time.
That Gergiev is an Imperialistic Business Oligarch has been known to the whole world since he entered the international stage three decades ago.
At least he is now more or less contained.
He conducted a week of performances of Berlioz “Romeo and Juliet” here in Chicago that were among the most memorable of my career. Not the first genius who turned out to be an utterly appalling human being.
Gergiev’s “footprint” should be set in stone as the most amazing and dedicated conductor in history. To see him work his craft would be an honor.
Like his pal Putin’s ‘footprint’ in Ukraine.
Maybe Valery Gergiev had told you during the time, when you knew him well, a story : that after the fall of the Soviet-Union he was offered to take over also the Bolshoi Theatre”, an offer, which he didn’t accept. Nothing is decided yet about the new “offer”; we will see.
I don’t agree with you calling the Mariinsky “a provincial opera house of limited significance” and the Bolshoi “still a world brand”. At least for opera it’s IMO the other way round.
I’ve seen Gergiev conduct about a dozen times around the world – DC, Moscow, Yerevan, Astana, Prague – with several different orchestras. All memorable concerts. But he could have denounced Putin and left Russia and would have been welcomed with open arms by orchestras and opera houses around the world. A lot less to risk than Rostropovich assumed when he protected Solzhenitsyn. So IMHO an important musician but a human who chose poorly, to put it kindly.
You would think running a house as busy as the Maryinsky would be enough to keep him fully occupied, and even in that position he has usually managed to be in Moscow a lot. I don’t see how taking over the Bolshoy is good for either him or the house.
A dreadful shame we’ve gone from respected artists like Sinaisky and Sokhiev to this awful human.