Vladimir Putin

The Bolshoi Theatre’s Director on the current closure and the worrying task of reopening

10 April 2020 by gramilano Leave a Comment

In a plain-speaking interview with the Russian newspaper Kommersant, the Bolshoi Theatre’s General Director, Vladimir Urin, talked about the impending challenges for not only his theatre but theatres the world over.

“I very much hope that we will resume operations in the new season. That is the best-case scenario. Considering the way this situation is developing, I am almost sure that no performances will be possible until the end of June; perhaps not even until the end of July.”

And the worst-case scenario?

I don’t want to get into it, because it’s scary even to predict what would happen if we don’t open in September. It could go as far as the destruction of the theatre.

Rights group asks for Polunin ballet in Verona’s Arena to be cancelled

15 May 2019 by gramilano 3 Comments

A full-page article in today’s Corriere della Sera, a major Italian newspaper, has the headline: Polunin, the bad boy of dance “is homophobic”. After recent Instagram postings which were widely discussed, Sergei Polunin found sponsors disappearing and an engagement at the Paris Opera Ballet cancelled. The most commentated post was the one where he urged […]

Ukrainian ballerinas perform anti-Putin Swan Lake in front of tanks

3 May 2014 by gramilano 5 Comments

In Odessa four brave cygnets danced to Tchaikovsky’s music in front of military tanks. The Ukrainian ballerinas were outside Odessa’s military history museum, and, reports The Moscow Times, “was a nod to a Soviet-era tradition” when “state-run television traditionally aired classical music during periods of great change in the Soviet Union.” Oleksiy Honcharenko, who presents the event on the YouTube […]

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

26 September 2011 by gramilano Leave a Comment

The papers are full of interviews with Russian soprano Anna Netrebko, 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 […]