RUSSIA: Bolshoi theatre premieres Shostakovich's "Golden Age" ballet to mark the composer's centenary

Record ID: 568406

  • Title: RUSSIA: Bolshoi theatre premieres Shostakovich's "Golden Age" ballet to mark the composer's centenary
  • Date: 6th April 2006
  • Summary: SCENE FROM "THE GOLDEN AGE" BALLET
  • Embargoed: 21st April 2006 13:00
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  • Topics: Entertainment
  • Reuters ID: LVAAEU0AV9NO36PWERT4KJ392PJR
  • Story Text: Moscow's Bolshoi theatre has marked composer Dmitry Shostakovich's 100th birthday by staging his ballet "The Golden Age".
    The premiere of the ballet at the end of March, also heralded a triple triumph for the Bolshoi - all three of the Russian composer's ballets - "The Golden Age", "The Bright Stream" and "Bolt" - are now included in the theatre's repertoire.
    Like many of his works, Shostakovich's ballets were banned in the Soviet era, soon after they were first staged.
    "The Golden Age", written by the composer when he was only 24, was staged in St.Petersburg by the Kirov ballet company in 1930. The original work choreographed by Vassily Vainonen, had a clear-cut scenario about an encounter abroad, at an industrial fair, between a Soviet soccer team and a team from a Nazi Germany. After the premiere the ballet was strongly criticized by Soviet authorities on both political and artistic grounds and was quickly closed down.
    It was not until 1982 that Yuri Grigorovich, then Bolshoi's artistic director, decided to "restore justice" and managed to stage the ballet. "I have always had a dream to stage one of Shostakovich's ballets. But when I realised that they were practically banned, that no theatre showed them, I asked Dmitry Dmitrievich (Shostakovich) several times to let me to stage them. But he somehow never wanted to do it; I don't know why; probably in the old days it was a very sensitive and painful issue for him. So, unfortunately, I only managed to stage "The Golden Age" after the death of Dmitry Dmitrievich. His widow, Irina Antonovna brought me the musical score, she knew that I wanted to stage this ballet, and she asked me to do it," said Yuri Grigorovich, at premiere of the ballet at the new Bolshoi stage. The Bolshoi recently asked Grigorovich to revive the ballet once again and to help complete the theatre's triple billing of Shostakovich's ballets For his 1982 staging of the ballet, Grigorovich changed a libretto, which Shostakovich had always blamed for the failure of the ballet. In the new version, "The Golden Age" becomes the tale of the conflict between the Soviet youth on one hand and gangster and bourgeois elements on the other in an unidentified seaport in the 1920s.
    Now "The Golden Age" is a Soviet restaurant in which a ballroom team entertains so-called profiteers during the era of the New Economic Policy (NEP), when private enterprise was temporarily reintroduced into the Soviet Union.
    "I think for the audience it is very interested to see this ballet. And for the dancers; it is very interesting to dance in it, because, there is a conflict in it and this gives you drive (as a dancer). This conflict, this passion continues until the very end of "The Golden Age" and this helps us in our work and helps us to express ourselves as artists," said one of Bolshoi's principal dancers Rinat Arifullin, who dances the part of a gang leader.
    In his version Grigorovich has revived the discarded Shostakovich score, which incorporated "Tea for Two" and Western dance tunes for its "decedent" cabaret scenes, and spliced in excerpts from the composer's piano concertos for the love duets.
    "I like this ballet very, very much. And you know, I've never felt so good dancing lyrical scenes before. Even in the "Swan Lake" I never could do the white act as good as I can dance the white duets here; I like them so much and I think I dance them well," said Bolshoi prima ballerina Anna Antonicheva.
    The Bolshoi theatre has billed the return of "The Golden Age" as a fitting tribute to one of Russia's greatest modern composers, who like many of his contemporaries, fell foul of the Soviet authorities. ussia's greatest modern composers, who like many of his contemporaries, fell foul of the Soviet authorities.
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