St Petersburg Travel Notes: installment four, entertainment
Eight days ago, we went to an evening of ballet at the Mariinsky I theater, that is to say at the old building dating from before the Revolution, as opposed to Mariinsky II around the corner.
Mariinsky I suited the tastes of the pre-Revolutoinary aristocracy, with plenty of velvet and gilt, with acoustic 'holes' in the parterre (stalls), which were of little importance when the truly wealthy sat in loges or the imperial box. That Mariinsky was a place for frequent visits by those who used it as a cozy place to socialize with their peers outside the fixed reception days in the homes of acquaintances.
Mariinsky II is a 21st century venue built under the directorship of intendantValery Gergiev to the aesthetic demands and new social habits of our age . The main hall is built exclusively from wood that was selected and configured by Japanese acoustics specialists. The comfortable seats have full visibility of the stage whatever your price category: There is no chance to espy through opera glasses who is sitting across the theater and chatting up whom in some loge opposite because high class gossip is out and front-facing seats are in.
The 3-hour show was Don Quixote, composed by the Czech-Russian Ludwig Minkus and choreographed by the French-Russian Marius Petipa during the golden age of the imperial theaters.
There were no big names known outside of Russia in the cast this evening. The lead dancers were all young, highly talented, very well trained and winners of competitions within the Russian Federation. The entire troupe was a marvel to watch even if here and there the steps of ballerinas grouped in threes and fours occasionally were not perfectly synchronized.
As we enjoyed the show, I involuntarily thought how surprising it is that this quintessentially aristocratic art form had survived the Revolution and long years of proletarian (so to speak) rule. The choreography, the gestures of the dancers all project elegance and gallantry. To be sure, this ballet based on Spanish rhythms and bullfight motifs also has its moments of passion and tango-like sharpness which these dancers performed to perfection.
As for the survival of classical ballet, my wife reminded me that the Communist bosses had a keen eye for a well turned female ankle, or whatever. And why should that not have been true given that none other than Nicholas II was enamored of a certain Mathilde Kshesinskaya, causing a minor scandal at the court. To her good fortune, Kshesinskaya escaped the Revolution and lived out her days in relative grandeur in Paris.
In his memoirs To Dance, the Soviet ballet star Valery Panov wrote explicitly about the psychological pressures of spending several hours on stage in a noble milieu only to return home after the show to a shabby one room flat where he lived on the allowances of a pauper. Panov defected to the West in the days when Baryshnikov, Nureyev and Makarova were dancing in our theaters and reinvigorating our dance companies and audiences. He was past his prime but he brought with him his young ballerina wife whose career he mentored.
And then there were and presumably still are the psychological pressures of gender identity to trouble the performing collective.. Whatever the sexual orientation of individual dancers, romantic heterosexual love between beautiful specimens of our species is all that you see on the stage in a classical ballet like Quixote.
These were the musings that I carried with me to the two intervals, one of which we spent in the 'buffet,' where some of the throng do as I did and reserve a table and place their orders before they take their seats at the start of the evening so as to avoid standing in line and eating an expensive meal while balancing food and beverage in their hands.
There was a choice of sandwiches (caviar or salami at virtually the same price), eclair or other pastry, Russian sparkling wine or strong drink from among the foreign and domestic offerings. Our bill, amounting to the equivalent of 35 euros for two was in line with what others paid at neighboring tables. That is the price for the 20 minute 'rental' of the space.
Speaking of money, our loge seats just above the parterre seats third row cost us 75 euros each. Of course there were cheaper seats as well as much more dear seats on sale when I purchased tickets online a week in advance. As you will conclude, an evening of ballet today at the Mariinsky is priced at levels similar to those in major European or US theaters. The house accommodates 1600 and every seat was sold out, with Russians accounting for perhaps 99 percent of the audience.
It bears mention that demand and prices for ballet is higher for ballet than for opera. I am going to a performance of The Flying Dutchman at Mariinsky I tonight and the seat prices in the stalls are 40 per cent cheaper than I paid for Quixote. Although there is English translation of the libretto shown above the stage at opera performances, most people prefer to dispense with words altogether. That surely was a big factor in the pricing policy set at the Mariinsky 30 years ago when a large proportion of the audience for the best and most expensive seats consisted of foreigners from the West. They are long gone but the pricing policy remains in place.
I regretfully understand present-day pricing at the Mariinsky. Since the imposition of sanctions, it is not only well-heeled New Yorkers and Londoners who have been lost to the theater. The profitable foreign tours in the West and video or audio recording contracts no longer are available to offset their operating costs. Its Friends of the Mariinsky in London and New York are also only a distant memory. But life moves on. The many wealthy Russians residing in Petersburg or arriving from further afield within the Federation also compensate their own inability to travel in Western Europe and America to enjoy the performing arts; they can easily afford these new tariffs here.
As for pensioners and students, there are special reduced priced tickets available to them under certain restrictions; so the audience is by no means limited to plutocrats.
Nonetheless, many ordinary working class Russians are unhappy that the days are long gone when a ticket to the Mariinsky cost the same as or less than a cinema ticket . That was the situation in the 1990s.
The issue of high ticket prices received wide discussion here a couple of weeks ago following the publication of an article by the well known dancer Nikolai Tsiskanidze denouncing the policy of theater tickets costing as much as the monthly wage of some.
That being said, you don't have to go to the Mariinsky I or II to enjoy top quality opera, ballet and concerts of every variety. There are many venues in this town and many companies to perform in them. By way of example, the Mariinsky's own very modern and acoustically excellent hall just a few hundred meters away from the main stages offers opera performances in concert version at prices that cost substantially less.
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Petersburg has many opera and dance companies offering quality performances all year long. It also has many orchestral ensembles that can be heard in the spacious salons that every self-respecting owner of a noble palace built for his private soirees. These venues are now largely open to the public.
The city's Philharmonic building is home to two full symphonic orchestras of international renown:. . Before the Revolution this 19th century structure was the social center of the Russian nobility where it held its festive coming out balls for the debutantes and would-be matchmakers. Think of the respective ball scenes in War and Peace. The location is central, just off the city's main boulevard, Nevsky Prospekt and across the Arts Square from the Russian Museum.
This autumn the symphonic concerts are not very interesting. Foreign guests are few, although there was one event a couple of weeks ago that was justifiably sold out: a concert featuring the emigre Russian pianist Liza Leonskaya and commemorating the long-time principal conductor in this house, Yuri Temirkanov who died a year ago. Temirkanov began his career in the Mariinsky where he was the predecessor of Gergiev. From the late 1990s he also was principal guest conductor in Baltimore. Those were different times, of course.
I cannot mention the Petersburg Philharmonic without saying a word about its equally high quality, high style restaurant where in the days of Temirkanov they surely celebrated with invited soloists after the concerts, but which today is open to the public and offers excellent traditional Russian dishes and attentive service at moderate prices that are a fraction of what the menu shows at the over-the-top dining rooms of the Hotel Europe across the street.
The Hotel Europe is, of course, a desirable place to stay for those of you on expense account. Once upon a time, it was the preferred lodging of Piotr Tchaikowsky for several days at a time when he arrived back in Russia from travels abroad.
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Petersburg is Russia's second most populous city and at the outer edges as you arrive from the airport or by bus from the Baltic states you appreciate at once the vast complexes of ultra-modern high rise apartment buildings that ring the city intermixed with 'shopping and entertainment' centers that resemble the urban sprawl around Moscow. However the city center of Petersburg has a 19th century architectural scale and design which supports the notion that this is a museum city in most every sense.
All that is missing here is what we heard about in Dubai a year ago when we asked our concierge which museums we might visit and were told there is only one there – the “museum of the future.” Our fault, we were thinking of Abu Dhabi, where the Louvre has opened an outpost.
To my knowledge the Russian Federation has no museum of the future. It has many museums and galleries dedicated to contemporary art and they are most concentrated in Moscow where the country's living artists have set up shop. By contrast, St Petersburg is a monument to the imperial past and home to the country's best known museums of this ilk. From among these, the Hermitage is the national flag carrier. It is one of the world's very few 'universal museums' showcasing the arts from around the globe, with core treasures from 17th to 20th century Europe that came down from acquisitions by Catherine the Great and later by private Russian collectors like the merchants Morozov and Shchukin. Some of the most important works of the French Impressionists can be viewed in the Hermitage's General Staff annex building across the Palace Square from the Winter Palace. No lines there, by the way, unlike the main buildings.
By contrast, the other major art museum here is the Russian Museum, located across the Square of the Arts from the aforementioned Philharmonic Hall. As its name implies, it is devoted to Russian art from the earliest icon painters to the time present. They now have a month-long temporary exhibition of the major 19th century Russian painter Karl Brullov which I intend to visit today in their main building. The museum entrance to the so-called Benois building around the corner and catty-corner on a canal from the Church on the Blood takes you straight to the Russian Museum's fabulous collection of the early 20th century inventors of abstract and modern art including Malevich a several dozen other world famous pioneers.
The Western sanctions have taken a toll on the city's art museums. The Hermitage was obliged to close its branch museum in Amsterdam that had taken herculean efforts to establish decades earlier and then folded like a deck of cards amidst a wave of Russophobia. More importantly for its domestic visitors in Russia, the Hermitage has lost its ties with Western museums and with the insurance companies that made possible in decades past 'blockbuster' temporary exhibitions. Any idea of exchange exhibitions is stymied by threats of confiscation of Russian works of art sent abroad.
One positive result for today's visitors to Russian art museums is the end of discriminatory pricing against Westerners that dated from the early 1990s. No longer will you be charged a price several times that of the tariff for Russian citizens. Curiously the world famous Hermitage now has a 'standard' admissions ticket to the Winter Palace main building set at 500 rubles, a little less than 5 euros, with 300 rubles for students and seniors. In a gesture to the pro-breeding policies of the Putin government, the museum posts a 1 ruble fee for 'members of families with many kids.'
Curiously, the Russian Museum's Russian language web pages show a standard entrance fee well above that of the Hermitage: 700 rubles for adults and 500 rubles for students and seniors. Still more curious, the English language web pages indicate a standard fee of 1,000 rubles to those buying online. Perhaps they have discriminatory pricing but are concealing it better than by the in-your-face methods of the past.
Both museums urge prospective visitors to buy their tickets online and to choose the hour and day of your planned visit. If you miss the hour, your ticket is invalidated. If you do not buy in advance, especially in the Hermitage, you may face long lines at the cash desk.
Whether foreigners pay more or not, the prices set by these museums today look quite cheap compared to what is demanded by museums in the West. From my experience, the record holder in this regard may be the Gaudi house-museum in downtown Barcelona which I visited three weeks ago. The admission ticket at the Casa Batllo for any given hour is 40 euros per person. Nonetheless there was a long line of visitors, including many young Japanese women who seemed delighted to pay for the experience. We also saw them waiting their turn to pay an additional 15 euros inside the building to have their photos taken in the open window space of the main facade.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024