Mud will be slung tonight: Tsiskaridze and Volochkova expose prostitution at the Bolshoi

 ballet  2 Responses »
Mar 202013
 

Volochkova told about the intimate services to more NTV.Ru2 Mud will be slung tonight: Tsiskaridze and Volochkova expose prostitution at the BolshoiEx– dan­cer Ana­stasia Voloch­kova and cur­rent star and stir­rer  have been on Rus­sian tele­vi­sion to add even more mud to an already murky pond.

The Bolshoi’s gen­eral man­ager, Anatoly Iksanov, has said that Volochkova’s claims that the com­pany pimped out its baller­inas to rich pat­rons was “non­sense and dirt”.

Accord­ing to Bloomberg, Voloch­kova, who was fired in 2003 for being over­weight, said:

Girls are invited each in turn by the admin­is­trator, who explains that they are going to a party, with din­ner and a follow-up, in bed and going all the way.

And who attends these parties?

Cer­tain olig­archs, some of them are mem­bers of the board of trust­ees (of the Bolshoi) or just the per­son organ­iz­ing the party.

Tsis­karidze, on the same pro­gramme, added that he was ready to take on the top job at the Bolshoi, to which Iksanov responded:

It’s up to him to think that he’s cap­able of tak­ing charge of the Bolshoi; I don’t think so, because bey­ond fame and scan­dal­ous­ness other qual­it­ies are needed.

45d8beec2ff7 500x382 Mud will be slung tonight: Tsiskaridze and Volochkova expose prostitution at the BolshoiWith Bal­let Dir­ector lay­ing in a Ger­man hos­pital bed as doc­tors try to save his eye­sight after the acid attack instig­ated by Bolshoi soloist Pavel Dmitrichenko, it is easy to see Tsis­karidze as the bad boy. How­ever, over 300 Bolshoi work­ers have signed a let­ter sup­port­ing Dmitrichenko, though not for the acid attack, say­ing that he was forced to ‘confess’.

For sev­eral years Filin, even when he was no longer at the Bolshoi as a dan­cer, headed the theatre’s union. This role con­tin­ued even after he was appoin­ted as the new dir­ector of the com­pany, mean­ing that he was more or less free to do whatever he liked without constraint.

Dmitrichenko cri­ti­cised this con­flict of interests at union meet­ings, espe­cially being that his girl­friend, 21-year-old soloist Anzh­elina Voront­sova, was miss­ing out on roles because she had Filin’s rival Tsis­karidze as her coach (and, rumour has it, she was romantic­ally involved with Filin before both arrived at the Bolshoi). Who could she protest to — her union rep?

More mud will be slung…

 

Pho­tos: top, Ana­stasia Voloch­kova and Nikolai Tsis­karidze; bot­tom, Sergei Filin and Tsiskaridze

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  • wp socializer sprite mask 16px Mud will be slung tonight: Tsiskaridze and Volochkova expose prostitution at the Bolshoi
  • wp socializer sprite mask 16px Mud will be slung tonight: Tsiskaridze and Volochkova expose prostitution at the Bolshoi
  • wp socializer sprite mask 16px Mud will be slung tonight: Tsiskaridze and Volochkova expose prostitution at the Bolshoi
  • wp socializer sprite mask 16px Mud will be slung tonight: Tsiskaridze and Volochkova expose prostitution at the Bolshoi
  • wp socializer sprite mask 16px Mud will be slung tonight: Tsiskaridze and Volochkova expose prostitution at the Bolshoi
  • wp socializer sprite mask 16px Mud will be slung tonight: Tsiskaridze and Volochkova expose prostitution at the Bolshoi
  • wp socializer sprite mask 16px Mud will be slung tonight: Tsiskaridze and Volochkova expose prostitution at the Bolshoi

Russian virtuoso guitar player has all his fingers amputated

 music  2 Responses »
Jan 302013
 

Alexey Zimakov 2 500x400 Russian virtuoso guitar player has all his fingers amputated Alexey Zimakov, the win­ner of the 1991 Amer­ican Gui­tar Asso­ci­ation Com­pet­i­tion in Miami, and a vir­tu­oso player has had all the fin­gers on both hands ampu­tated after con­tract­ing severe frost­bite in his home town, Tomsk, in Siberia, reports Slipped Disc.

Here is what happened, accord­ing to Andrei Krylov, writ­ing on the Acous­tic Gui­tar forum:

He was invited to a party by friends of his father. In the middle of Decem­ber.
And he cer­tainly love and respect his father and his friends…
On the party they were drink­ing vodka.
I know that in they usu­ally would say — you must drink with us, full glass all the time, and if you do not drink — it is dis­respect to us and your father… and so on… and so on… and they always really really insist­ing on it…
Party was over.… [con­tinue reading]

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Great Russian soprano Galina Vishnevskaya dies at 86

 music, obituary, opera  No Responses »
Dec 112012
 

512px Galina Vishnevskaya Great Russian soprano Galina Vishnevskaya dies at 86Rus­sian opera legend Galina Vish­nevskaya has died today, Decem­ber 11, at the age of 86.

Vish­nevskaya was born in St Peters­berg (Len­in­grad) 25 Octo­ber 1926, and cast out by her par­ents at six weeks. She was raised in abso­lute poverty by her grand­mother. As a ten year old Galina was presen­ted with a gramo­phone and an album of Eugene One­gin. This was her pass­port from the harsh­ness of real­ity to an “ima­gin­ary world of beauty, magical sounds and unearthly pur­ity”, she said in her auto­bi­o­graphy Galina — a Rus­sian Story.

She made her pro­fes­sional stage début in 1944 singing oper­etta, then won a com­pet­i­tion at the  Theatre in Moscow in 1952 singing Rachmaninoff’s song “O, Do Not Grieve” and ’s aria “O pat­ria mia” from Aida.… [con­tinue reading]

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79-year-old Montserrat Caballé in hospital after a stroke and breaking her arm

 music  1 Response »
Oct 242012
 

Caballe 79 year old Montserrat Caballé in hospital after a stroke and breaking her armMont­ser­rat Caballé, now 79, suffered a stroke while in and, while briefly los­ing con­scious­ness, fell and broke an arm.

She was flown last Sat­urday to the Sant Pau hos­pital in Bar­celona where she is “show­ing favour­able pro­gress, fully con­scious and able to speak with her doc­tors and fam­ily mem­bers” says the Voice of Rus­sia.

Con­sequently she has had to can­cel upcom­ing engage­ments, includ­ing a per­form­ance sched­uled for this even­ing at the Aud­it­or­ium Girona in north-east Spain, where Caballé and her daugh­ter were due to give a joint recital.… [con­tinue reading]

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Battle of the pointes: Grishko and the threat of plastic

 ballet  2 Responses »
Nov 032011
 

Grishko Battle of the pointes: Grishko and the threat of plasticNikolay Grishko runs the com­pany he foun­ded by in the late 1980s after accom­pa­ny­ing his pro­fes­sional dancer-wife Tamara dur­ing a French tour: Rus­sian dan­cers were bring­ing bal­let shoes from theatre work­shops at home to sell to European dancers.

Grishko resolved to exploit this mar­ket by organ­ising the Rus­sian work­shops to make bal­let shoes for export, and in doing so gave employ­ment to many crafts­men dur­ing the dif­fi­cult eco­nomic trans­ition of the 1990s. But what finally con­vinced Grishko to start his own busi­ness was when a Soviet trade organ­iz­a­tion respons­ible for sales to the United States approached him with a request to find pointe shoes for an Amer­ican dan­cer. The request sent him search­ing. But find­ing the shoes was not easy. By 1988, the theatre work­shops had already begun to fall apart and could hardly sup­ply them­selves, let alone external con­sumers.… [con­tinue reading]

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La Scala’s Raymonda “is a true banquet: pomp, circumstance, and an entire world on stage”, says the Financial Times

 ballet  1 Response »
Oct 312011
 

Raymonda Novikova Vogel La Scalas Raymonda is a true banquet: pomp, circumstance, and an entire world on stage, says the Financial TimesThe Fin­an­cial Times vis­ited Milan’s his­toric theatre to wit­ness ’s recon­struc­tion of — a pro­duc­tion which is send­ing ripples of interest and excite­ment around the bal­let community.

This blog alone, and its asso­ci­ated chan­nel, has received thou­sands of extra vis­its to read about Ray­monda, push­ing the asso­ci­ated posts to the top of the most viewed list. The coun­tries most inter­ested seem to be Amer­ica, Rus­sia, Bri­tain and, of course, Italy.

Dur­ing August when the Bal­let was vis­it­ing at the Royal Opera House in Lon­don, The awar­ded many 4 and 5-star reviews dur­ing the three week run. But this is unusual, and they are handed out with cau­tion. With Ray­monda, La Scala got a 5-star review and some glow­ing words for a com­pany which has often puzzled vis­it­ing crit­ics in recent years.… [con­tinue reading]

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Newsweek finds out what makes Anna Netrebko tick… and why she hates ‘toska’

 interview, opera  No Responses »
Sep 262011
 

 

Vladimir Putin Anna Netrebko 2008 Newsweek finds out what makes Anna Netrebko tick... and why she hates toskaThe papers are full of inter­views with Rus­sian sop­rano , espe­cially dur­ing this, the month of her 40th birth­day. They are not exactly car­bon cop­ies of each other, but very sim­ilar: plans to open a res­taur­ant, over­com­ing geo­graph­ical bound­ar­ies to meet up with hubby Erwin Schrott, and her adop­ted home, Austria.

Peter Pom­er­ant­sev, a Brit­ish tele­vi­sion pro­du­cer and non­fic­tion writer, inter­viewed Net­rebko in Salzburg, in Rus­sian. He gives some unique insights as to what makes the diva tick in an in-depth art­icle for New­s­week:

To the Rus­sian ear, Net­rebko is imme­di­ately pro­vin­cial, her speech full of the sing­song vow­els and inton­a­tions of the Krasnodar region of south­ern . It’s an accent that’s the butt of jokes in the Big City, and she was teased for it when she came up to study in St.… [con­tinue reading]

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