Opening Samara performances, April 30, is Dmitri Shostakovich's "The Limpid Stream", a comic ballet about a Soviet collective farm. Prohibited under Joseph Stalin's dictatorship, it left the Bolshoi repertoire quite soon after its first night, 1936, as the daily Pravda, chief Soviet ideological mouthpiece, branded it "falsity in the ballet".
Alexei Ratmansky, Bolshoi Ballet artistic director and one of Russia's most sensational choreographers, made a "Limpid Stream" revival at the Bolshoi's new experimental stage, 2003, to come among the peaks of theatre achievements and earn public enthusiasm. It won the year's Gold Mask national stage award on four nominations.
Mayday will see Modest Mussorgsky's "Boris Godunov", the Bolshoi Opera's longest-established endeavor, which came through several dozen productions. Samara will have a revival of a 1946 version by Leonid Baratov, prominent operatic stage producer of the 1930s into 50s, and disciple of renowned trailblazing director Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko. Alexander Vedernikov, Bolshoi music supervisor, will be conducting.
He will appear as conductor in Samara on another occasion, May 2, with Dmitri Shostakovich's Seventh "Leningrad" Symphony at a Bolshoi symphony orchestra concert. The composer wrote it in the nazi-besieged city to dedicate his masterpiece "to forthcoming victory". The Bolshoi orchestra premiered the drama-laden symphony in Samara, March 5, 1942. From that day on, it was symbol of Soviet life-and-death struggle against fascism. The symphony now comes as victory galas leitmotif.
The Bolshoi opens guest performances, April 30, in another city on the Volga-Togliatti, automotive industrial seat. Opera soloists and the theatre brass band will appear with wartime tune renditions in a charitable concert for war veterans.
A similar concert will be held in Moscow, afternoon May 7, at a veteran greeting ceremony. The same night will be memorable with Adolphe Adam's "Giselle". The 19th century classic came as one of the Bolshoi's first wartime revivals after the company returned from evacuation. Starring it that night was Galina Ulanova, an unsurpassed Romantic ballerina.
May 8 and 9 will see a revival of Aram Khachaturyan's "Spartacus", one of the peak Soviet ballet achievements. Brainchild of ballet master Yuri Grigorovich, that version first appeared late in the 1960s, and starred, on varying casts, the company's top dancers to come as their triumph-Vladimir Vassilyev, Maris Liepa, Mikhail Lavrovsky, Ekaterina Maximova, and Natalia Bessmertnova.
"We revere the valiant people who defended our country, its honor and dignity. They preserved for the generations to come the Bolshoi Theatre, our national treasure, and we especially venerate them for it. The company is flattered to perform to war veterans," says Anatoli Iksanov, Bolshoi Director General.
