Paris (AFP).- Even during the Cold War, Russian artists frequently performed in the West, but with the invasion of Ukraine, Europe seems unwilling to see companies like the Bolshoi or the Morozov collection of modern art in Paris again.
Just over a week after the Russian offensive began, Russian artists and companies have seen their shows canceled in Western theaters, raising fears of cultural isolation.
“Even in the darkest moments of the Cold War, cultural exchanges between Russian, American and European artists continued. There were always tensions, but it was possible,” Peter Gelb, director of the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, told AFP.
“No possibility”
“What is happening now is different, it goes beyond the Cold War, it is a real war,” says Gelb, who visited Moscow a few days before the Russian attack to discuss a co-production with the Bolshoi.
Peter Gelb, 69, knows what he’s talking about. In the 1980s, this American worked as an agent for the legendary Ukrainian-born pianist Vladimir Horowitz, for whom he arranged his triumphant return to Russia. He also recorded cellist Mstislav Rostropovich’s comeback concerto.
Soviet artist tours in the West began in the 1950sespecially those of ballet companies, a discipline with strong Russian influence, converted by the Soviets into a propaganda weapon.
Some of these trips (during which the artists were under heavy surveillance) entered history with force. For example, the stay of the Bolshoi in London in 1956, with the legendary Galina Ulanova, or the tour of the Kirov ballet (renamed Mariinsky) in Paris in 1961, where Rudolf Nureyev took the opportunity to flee and stay in France.
But the Americans were not far behind either: the American Ballet Theater performed for the first time in Moscow in 1960, and two years later (in the midst of the missile crisis in Cuba) it was the turn of the New York City Ballet, which completed its tour despite of the tensions.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, cultural exchanges became stronger, Russian “star” dancers moved on to other companies (such as Svetlana Zajarova, the “czarina” of dance, star of both the Bolshoi and the Milan Scala ).
The appointment in 2011 of the dancer David Hallberg as a “star” of the Bolshoi went a step further. No American had ever held that position. The unimaginable had become possible.
But, for Gelb, “in the current context of brutality against innocent citizens, there is no possibility of making exchanges like those that took place in the Cold War.” The institution he heads has ceased its collaboration with the Bolshoi.
And both the Metropolitan and the Paris Opera and other European venues made the decision not to hire pro-Putin artists.
The Royal Theater of Madrid reported this Friday the suspension of Bolshoi performances in the Spanish capital, scheduled for May.
In London, the representation of the Bolshoi was also annulled.
The former director of the Bolshoi before seeking his luck abroad, the Russian choreographer Alexei Ratmanski, left two new productions with this company and with the Mariinsky ballet. Frenchman Laurent Hilaire, who directs the Moscow Stanislavski Ballet, resigned after five years at the helm.
Criticism has focused above all on two superstars considered to be close to the Russian regime: the conductor Valeri Guérguiev, declared persona non grata in many theaters and abandoned by his agent; and the soprano Anna Netrebko, queen of the lyrical art who had to cancel several commitments.
“3/4 parts of your activity”
“Where will Russian artists who are not invited to Europe and America go in the coming months? China gave no signs that it will resume activity (due to covid-19). They only have their own country left,” Laurent Bayle, former director general of the Paris Philharmonic, told AFP.
“So 3/4 of their activity is in the air,” he added.
If the war “ends with the occupation of a country, it is clear that no one will risk inviting Russian artists” that they have not shown their distance from the regime, considers Bayle.
But not all artists are in the same basket. Some, like the conductor Vasili Petrenko, who lives in Britain, announced that they would suspend their activities in Russia.
A situation that changes when talking about subsidized institutions. “We cannot separate the Bolshoi and the Mariinsky from the authorities. They receive public funding and, in the eyes of the world, to speak of the Bolshoi is to speak of the Russian state”, says Bayle.
Source: Eluniverso
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