Living at the Opera

Like a mighty caravan heavily laden with artistic gold, the Mariinsky Theater journeyed half the globe in October, 2006, to transport the largest, and what turned out to be the longest, festival program in its international history, to the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Orange County, CA

It appears these days that Valery Gergiev, the Mariinsky’s tireless general and artistic director, never seems to miss an opportunity to show off his Kirov Company (as it is known outside its home base, St. Petersburg, Russia,) in any venue that can financially afford to mount it.

What made the Orange County proposal for a Mariinsky festival so attractive to Gergiev was the almost unlimited funds stashed away in the Henry Segerstrom Fund that could easily pay for the company to bring its entire artistic output - opera, orchestra and ballet - to the many enthusiastic Kirov fans who have professed an undying allegiance to the company over the years.

The substantial self-confidence and almost genetic poise Gergiev and his seasoned Mariinsky travelers displayed during their 17-day stay in Costa Mesa, Orange County’s pricey mecca for the arts, were nearly overhadowed by the magnitude of the venture. Laura Bleiger, in an article for The Orange County Register was able to find out some of the specifics of the Kirov’s trek to the western part of the United States. She noted, “Almost 579 St. Petersburg dancers, musicians, singers and theater personnel have arrived in Costa Mesa; 32 40-foot sea containers filled with sets, props and costumes have pulled up to the theater’s loading docks.”

The whole undertaking started with the technical and support staff, who had the responsibility of packing up the numerous, oversized pieces of scenery, the many weighty costumes and the heavy theatrical equipment required for the Marinsky’s production of Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle and Musorgsky’s national opera, Boris Godunov, and ship it all from St. Petersburg to California, hoping that everything would arrive in time for the first Ring opera, Das Rheingold, on October, 6th. While the staff was focusing on its task, Gergiev, no doubt, was using his didactic powers to pull his company of singers together, who, in September, were performing in different world capitals, so as to make sure they would get to Costa Mesa on time. According to one staff member traveling with Gergiev, the maestro and his orchestra had just come from Europe where the Kirov had recently performed Dimitri Shostakovich’s Seventh and Fourteenth Symphonies among others, as part of the Kirov’s world tour honoring the 100th anniversary of the composer’s birth. In Costa Mesa, along with the Ring and Boris Godunov, Gergiev has scheduled five Shostakovich symphonies and a piano concerto in the new Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall. The number of performances Gergiev had scheduled for the entire Mariinsky Festival did not appear daunting for the maestro. No matter how exhausing the roster might be for him and his company, Gergiev seemed to delight in the logistical challenge. A lone bass player, checking the performance schedule in the lobby of the South Costal Westin Hotel lobby where they were staying, commented in a moment of ambiguious candor, “I love to play Shostakovich’s music, but we are so tired.”

The advertisements sent out by the Performing Arts Center to the general public in the summer of 2005, listed the original number of performances at 13 - four for the Ring, of course, three Shostakovich concerts, two of Boris Godunov and two each of the ballets, Romeo and Juliet and Swan Lake. By the time the Festival began, the Mariinsky had increased that number to 17, adding two more performances of Godunov and two for their world-renowned Swan Lake. With such an immense and physically-taxing work schedule, it wouldn’t be unrealistic to foresee the company might not be able to perform at its highest artistic level that Orange County audiences were hoping for; perhaps it was inevitable that there had to be some tarnished brass among all that gold.

(This is the first in a series of articles on The Mariinsky Festival that took place in Costa Mesa, CA. during October, 2006)

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 19th, 2006 at 8:15 pm and is filed under Russian opera. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.