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Text File | 1993-04-08 | 6KB | 121 lines

                                                                                CULTURE, Page 76

Paying the Price of Freedom


The Kirov Opera barnstorms the U.S. as its chief, Valery Gergiev,
confronts the dilemma of the arts in post-Soviet Russia: how
to survive without subsidies

By MARTHA DUFFY


    It's a good thing Valery Gergiev is a sturdy optimist.
Gergiev is artistic director and principal conductor of St.
Petersburg's Kirov Opera. His is the finest company in Russia,
and it is now on its first ever U.S. visit, playing New York
City's Metropolitan Opera House.

    All of which may sound very grand, but the reality is
harrowing. For the Kirov is a company in crisis, and the swarm
of challenges it faces makes it emblematic of a whole culture
in crisis. The Kirov, like virtually all the major performing
troupes in the former Soviet Union -- the Bolshoi and countless
folk and choral groups -- is struggling to survive in a parlous
new era. When the communist regime dissolved and the economy
collapsed, these institutions were cast adrift. The Kirov's
subsidy was cut from 95% of its budget to 35%, and it will sink
lower. Gergiev has the double task of keeping his treasure
functioning at all and at the same time hauling it from the
timeless miasma of Soviet bureaucracy into the tough
entrepreneurial world of the late 20th century.

    As a conductor of great skill and dark, sexy good looks,
Gergiev, 39, could be getting rich on the international concert
and opera circuit. But, he says, "that's not what it's about."
What matters to him is the Kirov, whose past he reveres and in
whose future he has militant confidence. "It will go on
naturally and beautifully as it has for 200 years. It's full of
energy -- lots of vitamins."

    He welcomes the end of the Soviet state because it gave
artists like him some real freedom as well as an opening to the
West. "The party leadership was stupid and dull," he says. "They
could come into rehearsals and enforce artistic changes. Now I
decide what we do."

    But the price of liberation has been high. Life under the
Soviet system may have been constricted, but it was comfortable.
Staffs were huge: the Kirov is a little city of 3,000 citizens
that includes the world-class ballet company, also on a U.S.
tour. The occasional visiting Western choreographer or director
found the system byzantine, but Gergiev takes a long view: "In
Russia everything is impossible, but at the end of the day,
things get done."

    Gergiev is one of the few who read the signs of change
early. Even before he got the Kirov's top job in May 1988, he
was planning co-productions with European houses. That was the
key: Russian arts had no choice but to look westward; as the
rubles melted away and inflation sent costs soaring, survival
depended on hard currency and touring. Both Russian and Western
impresarios have sent a glut of performers on the road. Next
year two groups currently calling themselves the Red Army Chorus
will be in the U.S. Some tours have been so badly mishandled
that troupes were stranded without meal money, not to speak of
passage home.

    The Kirov -- both the opera and dance divisions -- have
busily signed Western contracts. The ballet will perform The
Nutcracker in Tokyo each year for the next decade. The opera,
besides a major contract with Philips Records, has co-production
deals going with Covent Garden and La Scala, among others. But
it will not return to the U.S. until 1995: Gergiev is wisely
wary of overexposure.

    What he has brought to the Metropolitan amounts to a
portrait of a company embarking on a cultural shift.
Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades and Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov
are first-rate productions that offer what opera lovers want to
hear: Russian classics performed with great depth of detail --
in orchestration, diction and idiomatic style. The Kirov
embodies the Russian tradition of opera, which is very different
from the Western one. As the maestro says, "The chorus and the
orchestra are the hero. The chorus is stronger than any star,
and it must be a single personality divided into a hundred
parts."

    The third opera shows a new direction. It is Prokofiev's
little known The Fiery Angel, an overwrought vision of
possession and sexual hysteria. A co-production with Covent
Garden, it was directed as an arresting theater piece by British
experimental director David Freeman. Freeman uses gymnasts as
the devils who torment the heroine, having rehearsed them in
concentrated, mesmerizing animal movements that quickly steal
the spotlight from the singers. Trendy? Possibly. But the
production maintains its musical balance as well.

    To launch deals like the one with Covent Garden, Gergiev
has very little help. Surrounded by old-school functionaries,
he must train a staff that can do business with the West. He
seems to proceed on instinct, with more than a little of the old
Diaghilev in him. Often he will end a long evening on the podium
with a couple of hours of nuts-and-bolts negotiating.

    He spends half his time on the road, but his heart is in
St. Petersburg. His mission is to bring "part of our city's
soul" to the rest of the world. Among his idols is Peter the
Great, whose wild equestrian statue he passes every day he is
at home. "It is the symbol of the city, of enormous power. Peter
wanted to learn, not just to command. With great symbols and
images like that, you can't feel hopeless or helpless." Gergiev
may need every bit of the emperor's strength -- along with
those Kirov vitamins.