Russia’s Bolshoi re-opens following historic refit

Russia’s famed Bolshoi Theatre finally lifted its curtain yesterday after a six-year closure for reconstruction that aimed to restore the former glory of its imperial splendour and artistic reputation.

Russian President Dmitry Med-vedev told the audience that the Bolshoi was a “national treasure”, before the curtain went up for a spectacular invitation-only gala including performances by top ballet and opera stars.

The reconstruction “was very serious work, it lasted six years, everyone felt this, the theatre, the company and everyone who loved it,” Mr Medvedev told an audience including the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

“This is our national treasure,” he said.

In an opening item likely to cause controversy among traditionalists, the curtain parted to the sounds of chiming bells and flashing lights. Then performers in hard hats burst into a chorus from Glinka’s opera Ivan Susanin. In its heyday in the Soviet Union, the Bolshoi staged performances by legends such as ballerinas Maya Plisetskaya and Galina Ulanova and the mythical male dancer Maris Liepa.

In a nod to the Bolshoi’s traditions, the gala included a scene from the classic Soviet ballet Spartacus about the Roman slave, with star young dancer Ivan Vasiliev wowing the audience with his vertiginous leaps.

Silver-haired Russian opera star Dmitri Hvorostovsky sang a scene from Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades in the gala, which was broadcast live on Russian television, as well as on YouTube.

The historic building hosted its last performance in July 2005 and was then closed for urgent restoration works, without which it risked simply disintegrating with three-quarters of the building deemed to be decaying.

The Bolshoi’s entire opera and ballet troupe then moved to a newer but smaller theatre nearby with critics and even its own artists complaining that the cramped stage stifled its epic style.

“One of the main tasks of the reconstruction was bringing in new technology. Before 2005, we were lagging behind Europe by 100 years,” Bolshoi director Anatoly Iksanov told the government Rossiiskaya Gazeta newspaper.

“But what we have now after the reconstruction has no rival,” he said.

The 1,740 invitations were sent out only by the Kremlin administration and not by the theatre itself. The audience included ministers and top businessmen as well as the head of the Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill. Crowds outside wistfully watched the guests walking down a red carpet in evening dress.

“I am hoping for a miracle. I’ve never been to the Bolshoi and it’s my great dream to come here today on the opening night,” one waiting woman, Olga Mots, 55, said.