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From
the September 2001 issue of World Press Review (VOL. 48,
No. 9).
Gennadi Rozhdestvensky
The Bolshoi Buster
Tekla Szymanski
World Press Review Associate Editor
Gennadi Rozhdestvensky, 70, Russia’s most celebrated
conductor, was long considered an icon of the Bolshoi Theater’s
golden days. Now, a year after President Vladimir Putin appointed
him to lead the famous cultural institution out of its post-Soviet
decay, the silver-haired and, as London’s The Times
says, “notoriously impatient” Rozhdestvensky has resigned,
prompting Moscow’s Izvestiya to speak of a “scandalous
dismissal.” “It is alarming, that drive to entertain at
any cost, to stupefy, to conceal real music,” Rozhdestvensky
was quoted as saying in The Moscow Times, hinting at open
sabotage directed at him by the Bolshoi’s artists. This, he
is certain, caused his latest production of Prokofiev’s opera
, The Gambler, to be mocked by Russian critics for its squeaking
scenery and hoarse soloists. The maestro threw in his baton: “I
have been subjected to the most vicious, wild, horrendous, and impertinent
criticism for everything, for my very existence.”
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