Helene

I think the unhappiness is coming from different places: there are a number of dancers and people affiliated with the company who don't believe Dmitrichenko was capable of it, despite the confessions, and Filin, who believes that Dmitrichenko and the two hit people are not the only ones involved. Still, both sides believe that this is a pat round-up and authorities are trying to close the case and sweep the unanswered questions under the rug. A machine translation (bing) of the second-to-last paragraph is: A surprise for all, according to the source, was the statement by the Director of the ballet company Ruslan Pronin of the artistic director of the troupe's Owl on Thursday hosted a hard-hitting conversation with ballet dancer Batyr Annadurdyevym, who is friendly with Paul Dmitrichenko and which also caused the STOCK MARKET to give evidence. In the address Annadurdyeva by the Owl's alleged threats and accusations, and he wrote his resignation from the theater. The troupe said in defense of the artist and the ineligibility of any charges against him.

The three "Concerto Barocco" casts look terrific: Korbes/Imler/Bold, Chapman/Rausch/Lin-Yee, and Gilbreath/Dec/Cruz. We didn't see any of the pas de deux work during the "Men in Ballet" presentation on Monday, but there will be a tall (Dec/Cruz) and a medium-less tall cast (Korbes/Orza) at least for the new Paul Gibson Mozart piece. In the pas de trois, the opening cast is Nakamura/Griffiths/Moore, and we saw a section for Griffiths and Moore, and a bit of Nakamura in the finale. Like all of the pieces we saw, the roles will take a lot of energy. It's going to be a great opportunity for Carli Samuelson in the Nakamura role, and Andrew Bartee and Jerome Tisserand in Griffths' and Moore's. Also, the way the casting is formatted, it looks like Ryan Cardea may have a solo or featured role; we saw him in the male quartet. Mullin and Murphy might be the two newcomers to the Tharp.

Ismene Brown tweeted a link to her blog with some commentary and a translation of a new "Izvetsia" article in which she documents a meeting called with the Bolshoi dancers, who are not satisfied with answers they got from investigators, and in which the article states that the attack was planned earlier, and that the acid-thrower and driver were planning to beat up Filin in the fall, but the street was too crowded: http://www.ismeneb.com/ismeneb.com/Blog/Entries/2013/3/8_Dmitrichenko_had_tried_to_attack_Filin_before.html There are some odd things in the "Izvetsia" article. For example, Dmitrichenko is said to have agreed to pay the 50000 rubles after the beating, which didn't happen, and then he forgot about it until the "surprise" acid attack. He paid them after the acid attack. although he claims surprise and that he had not approved of the method. I wouldn't have wanted to mess with those two, though. Another thing is that Dmitrichenko approached Bolshoi management to complain about Filin's handling of prize money and other allegations of financial manipulation, and he was told to send his evidence to the union on 16 January. Filin was attacked the next day. The union says it didn't have time to investigate the allegations due to Filin's attack, which suggests Dmitrichenko went straight to the union. So far, there hasn't been any statement about whether the two actions were linked, having come one day after the other.

I thought the "Copenhagen Ring" was a brilliant achievement. There's a long interview between Queen Margrethe and director Kasper Bech Holten in the DVD extras. Addressing whether the production would be done again, he comented to the effect that it might not be relevant to the times by then, and perhaps that future time might need a production of its own time. I've liked and loved a lot of updated productions. One of my favorites was a "Semele" I saw by Arizona Opera. I loved most of the "Ring" I saw in San Francisco and Corsaro's Spanish Revolution "Carmen" for NYCO, and I was blown away by the second and third acts of Girard's "Siegfried" for the 2006 Canadian Ring that opened the Four Seasons Centre in Toronto. I thought the mistakes in "La Sonnambula" were to have her sleeping in the rehearsal room and creating an inn for the baritone. I think the inn should have been his star dressing room with a bed for naps -- Rene Pape,when adked what he did between Acts I and Iii of "Parsifal" said he tries to take a nap -- and that's where she should have been found. I wouldn't underestimate the animus over love affairs in the theater: there were plenty on record when Pinchas Zuckerman left Eugenia Zuckerman for an actress, Goddard Lieberson left his wife for Lorraine Hunt, and Simon Rattle left one of his early musician wives. (That bio was so tedious, I don't remember whether she was wife #1 or #2.)

I'm not so sure about this. It's not as if she wasn't being cast or encouraged: she was turned down for Odette/Odile in this stage of her career, which means Filin, for any feelings he has about her joining the Bolshoi instead of the Stanislavsky and his feelings about Tsiskaridze, put at least some of them aside or she wouldn't have gone on tour and she'd be the third-friend-from the back in "Coppelia" while her peer was given the lead. Ironically, had she joined the Stanislavsky, she likely would have been on a faster track with excellent coaching, and then when Filin became AD if the Bolshoi, he would have taken her with him -- she could have been his Carla Korbes -- and she'd be dancing O/O by now. Be careful what you wish for. The issue is that she seems to have drunk Tsiskaridze's koolaid and married into the pro-Grigorovich/anti-Filin camp. She could have shown her independence by getting what she needed from Tsiskaridze -- he is, after all, a full member of the company/staff -- but refusing to buy into Tsiskaridze's using her as a weapon, but that's a lot to ask of a young woman who's been told repeatedly that she's better than her station. Filin's advice to "look in the mirror" might be as metaphoric as it was literal. That contradicts all of the latest coverage that says Filin discovered her and moved her and her mother to Moscow and that is his motive for not giving her the roles she thinks she deserves. There hasn't been a single reference to any connection between Vorontsova and Grigorovich regarding how she got to Moscow. I'd think that would be something that Tsiskaridze would have been first to jump on, because it would take away credit from Filin for spotting and sponsoring her, and it would make Filin's actions all bout Tsiskaridze, which seems to be Tsiskaridze's favorite topic.

I don't think the articles say that Filin told her she needed to change coaches but suggested additional coaching from a female coach if she wanted to be capable of O/O. It was Tsiskaridze who claimed that Filin was trying to take away his pupils. Is that Bolshoi shorthand for "drop your coach?". Are coaches that territorial that dancers never get additional coaching from great interpreters or dancers who originated roles or got personal coaching from the choreographer/stager? If dancers are "allowed" this, is it only because of the noblesse of their coach? Is it typical for the coaches to agree to an AD's suggestion?

I know that the Russian and Chinese figure skating Federations take a percentage of the prize money the athletes win -- the official percentage is 10%, but it's paid directly to the Federation, not the athlete(s), and the official reason is because they've provided subsidized training (even when the Russian Fed was in disarray after the break-up of the Soviet Union and provided little for at least a decade). This was a given and wasn't hidden, although the percentage might have been. However, I don't think that it is customary for theater management to have agent-like arrangements, because then there would be no reason for Dmitrichenko to make accusations and hack into management's email to find evidence. It would be a known practice. It is standard practice for management to have to approve guest gigs, whether explictly arranged in the dancer's contract or during the time the dancer is specifically contracted to the company. It's also a fine line between using the Bolshoi name and having the Bolshoi affiliation be known. For example, if the posters and PR materials call them "Artists of the Bolshoi" as part of the name of the group, then the theater has every right to control whether this is permitted. If they are "Dancer X and Friends," there certainly can be no stopping the facts, such as a dancer is a Bolshoi [Rank], from being publicized in the dancer bios in the program and in newspaper previews and reviews.

Ismene Brown reports in an opinion piece in theartsdesk.com that Dmitrichenko does not believe he has anything to be sorry for, because he paid 50000 rubles for Filin to be beaten up and didn't know about the acid plans, which he would have expected to cost more. Dmitrichenko is a computer whiz and has been hacking into Bolshoi management's email accounts to expose what he claims is an extortion scheme by at least Filin in which dancers must pay fees to get roles and permission to dance overseas. (This is discussed in an article in "Izvetsia", which appears in translation on Brown's blog: http://www.ismeneb.com/ismeneb.com/Blog/Entries/2013/3/7_Bolshoi_soloist_paid_50%2C000_rubles_for_the_Filin_attack.html) Dmitrichenko was involved in the attacks on Filin last fall: cyberattacks, phone messages, and slashed tires. She doesn't mention the cyberattacks on Yanin.

Dmitrichenko is involved in real estate business circles? I smell the trail of the syndicate. They've seemed to be involved from the beginning (attack seems so professional hit-man)... but exactly how they were involved seemed rather vague... this is still vague, but another thread. This attack seems so thug-who-thinks-he-is-a-professional-hitman. A professional hit man wouldn't have left an audit trail, unless it was part of a set up to make him seem like a bumbling fool.

Of course the singers know tey're going to be interviewed. Some, like Netrebko, who in one of the first season's was interviewed in her dressing room, seem to thrive on it. Some of the others, not so much, and it's a trade-off. Who is going to say no to Peter Gelb?

It depends where and when in the US, where there is and has been common-law marriage with the legal rights and restrictions of marriage. A "marriage-like" relationship for one year is considered the basis for a family sponsorship for Permanent Residency in Canada. The difference is in the way the press states it. Even in places with common-law marriage, in a non-City Hall registered marriage the person is more oftened described as someone's "partner" than wife, whereas in Russia, it serms, the press refers to a live-in partner as a "husband" or "wife." There was hardly "no doubt" when he made his statement, and how big of him to decide the relative fall-out, especially when Tsiskaridze had already escewed the high road in his initial statements about how this was a love affair or business deal outside the theater and, as it turns out, it was in his own backyard, or at least part of it was. Even after his own conflicts with Filin and Bolshoi management made him a suspect -- not just his criticism but his methods -- and even after saying that he didn't think Dmitrienko was capable of the attack, he still threw him under the bus by talking about how Dmitrienko had conflicts with Filin "that everyone knew about" over grant money and how Filin distributed it. What a guy to be defending. Filin has been damaged permanently physically, his vision has been stolen, and he and his family have been traumatized, and Taranda thinks that Tsiskaridze's mostly self-inflicted damage to his reputation is somehow worse? Unlike most people, Tsiskaridze had a very public pulpit from which to do damage control: first by expressing his sympathy for the attack and decrying it, second by not speculating in ways that made it sound like the attack was caused by tawdry deeds outside the theater, and by using media to say, "I'm, like everyone else who had conflicts with Filin, being interviewed by the police, and I'm certain I will be cleared soon," even if he added that he thinks Filin is a horrible manager. If he's known more for his conflicts than his dancing, then that is his own doing. At this point, it's impossible to separate the damage he's inflicted on himself before and after he was suspected in any way -- Filin himself said early on that he didn't suspect Tsiskaridze -- and how much being suspected hurt his reputation. Perhaps it was not a good strategy for Tsiskaridze himself to say it hurts him more than Filin. In my opinion, Taranda's opinion speaks more about Taranda than Tsiskaridze, and Filin, by stating that he's sure there is more behind this than the three in custody, is trying to ensure that the backstory comes out. Conflict is a given in his line of work: there are more dancers, designers, conductors, and coaches than opportunities. What happened to him was criminal, and to change in light of a criminal attack -- an exception -- is a questionable strategy. Put like that, there isn't any real motive for the attack. Perhaps it's all a frame up. Except for second part of the story, which is that Dmitricheno didn't think it was enough, just like Vorontsova didn't think it was enough, so the motive is still there, even if it is a frame-up or Dmitichenko was involved but is taking the fall for others as well. Dmitrichenko was also quoted as complaining about salaries at the company, which is presumably why he was managing a dacha village outside Moscow, and wilth bigger promotions come bigger pay and sometimes (bigger) guesting opportunities. None of the articles said that Filin had rejected Dmitrichenko's grant proposals, only that they has fought about grants, but if that were so, it would be another financial motive. As far as Vorontsova or her entourage thinking she is being held behind, she's probably not only looking at the Somovas and Smirnovas and their careers, but also the trajectory of Osipova's. (It was Burlaka, not Filin, who insisted that Osipova break her ABT guest contract to join the company in DC for "Le Corsaire.") Osipova was offered money and apartments and great flexibilty in her contract by Kekhman, and she is back to guesting at the Bolshoi. What uber-talented 21-year-old who was sponsored at 16 to go to one of the most pretigious schools in the country by a former star and company director, was asked to join the Bolshoi, is the girlfriend of a rising dancer from a dance family, is coached by one of the most famous and self-promoting dancers around, and has been told and shown how wonderful she is and how she is being robbed of her due opportunities by coach and boyfriend wouldn't want to go as fast as possible up the food chain and think she deserves it? Most of the ones who haven't have loyalty to the institutions or get their dancing identities from them or put their careers into the hands of a creative genius like Balanchine despite other offers and possibilities.

I find it absurd that's she's considered 10 lbs. overweight.

The settlement was that Volochkova is on the roster and is paid, but the court couldn't make management cast her or include her in theater life. Effectively, her contract is being bought out over whatever period the court awarded her. I don't see what would have stopped them from doing the same to Tsiskaridze, legally, at least. However, as long as Grigorovich is there, what would the point be? When is this report from? She doesn't look fat to me, but I find the current aesthetic ridiculous, although without it, Carla Korbes wouldn't be in Seattle, and in her case, it was a silver lining for us out here. Are these clips recent? She's exquisite in them. The newspaper articles quote people saying that she had gained weight as she matured, and Gennadi Yanin is being interviewed, I'm not sure in what capacity.

Where did Iksanov say the acid attack occurred because Tsiskaridze went unpunished? I haven't seen any comments where Iskanov specifically addressed Tsiskaridze's student at all. Iksanov said that Tsiskaridze helped to foster an atmosphere in the theater in which the attack could take place in an interview in February. http://bigstory.ap.o...-chief-detained Perhaps Tsiskaridze should have been fired from the theater and paid out his contract like Volchkova, but they have Grigorivich there, and his is the name invoked in the description of all that was great and good at the Bolshoi. What is disturbing is that according to the "New York Times" the police are calling this a closed case, when Filin has said that these are not the only ones likely to be involved and people who've know Dmitrichenko have said that it's uncharacteristic of him to plot. There's still not talk of the cyberattacks on Yanin or Filin.

I don't mind watching: it's the listening that I don't like. In an opera house, I can usually find a spot where I'm not exposed to what the opera singer is like in real life or what other audience members think of the opera -- except on the loo line, where I wish I couldn't -- and, if I go alone, I'm not subjected to what my opera companion thinks about it, while I'm mulling it over. The issue with the intermission features is that they're not easy to escape if you want to avoid them, where if they were at the end, instead of the beginning, the only thing you'd hear is what's around you in the theater and a general murmur from the screen, like during the regular intermission. Should Gerald Finley really have a microphone stuck in his face within a minute of having sung a devastating "Batter My Heart"? I know I wanted to think about it and absorb it right afterwards, and I'm only audience. The only part of the artist interviews I really like are when they give greetings in their native language to their homies. That's my favorite part of going to opera in countries where I don't speak the language: people could be saying the most inane things that would make me want to jump over the balcony if I understood them, but it's one of the few times that not understanding makes things that much better. That's the problem: you can't avoid them. They start very soon after the curtain drops, and if you're in the 11th row behind a phalanx of elderly people trying to navigate stairs in the dark with their canes, the first interview is over before you can get out of the theater to avoid them.

The intermission interviews start within 20 seconds of the curtain. Unless the author was sitting on an aisle by the door and got up and ran into the lobby, it would have been impossible to miss them. Unless the author was willing to go in and out during the set changes between acts when there is no intermission, it's impossible to miss the banging and chatter. Typically, that's not possible. In my theater, I counted four people under the age of 50, and between the walkers, the canes, and elderly people trying to get down the aisles that don't have handrails, it typically takes at least five minutes of the intermission-intermission to get to the exit, by which time, I've already heard the blood-spattered Peter Mattei being interviewed happily. (I know he's being lauded for his physical performance, but I felt it for the two guys on whom he leaned and had to hold various contortions while supporting Mattei's body weight.) I know it's impractical for them to do the interviews, except the conductor, at the end of the long intermission, but I wish they could: 25 minutes later, I've always found the conductor interview a good way to transition back into the opera, after having braved the rest room line, the popcorn and poutine smells, and, in one theater south of Seattle, the blaring rock music and video game sounds. I also wish they would put the sound on mute while the stage-hands work. Then it would be possible to sit with closed eyes to think about what happened and to ignore the set change. Sirius/XM Met broadcasts have related issues for the archived versions: the don't wait more than a few seconds after one act before they edit in Juntwaite's pre-recorded synopses for the next -- there's no breather between acts -- and in live performances, she and her partner, usually William Berger, don't wait more than a few seconds before exclaiming how wonderful it was, which is longer than I have to rush out of the room to avoid them or to find the remote and the "mute" button. At least the intermission interviews are normally about upcoming operas and performers and are far more in-depth than the two-five-minute variety for the HD broadcasts.

Oh jeez Nicky, I really wish he would just stop talking to the press at this point it seems like he's courting the press more than they are hounding him. He's an attention hound, which is one of the reasons to investigate and get him out of the picture. Filin himself said that he didn't think that Tsiskaridze was behind the attacks. However, Filin is on record as saying that Dmitrichenko and his hired thugs aren't the only ones involved and that the investigation needs to be continued to find the rest. And how would they do this? Dancers typically put their 'slippers' (pointe shoes?) on in their dressing room. And most dancers make sure everything is just so with their shoes. This has a distinct Black Swan sound. Maybe the perpetrator was inspired by Black Swan? Dancers in the corps usually share a 1 or 2 big group dressing rooms. Most people prep a bunch of shoes at once and then use them as needed. She probably didn't look inside the box right before she put them on. I'm sure she looks inside now. Films and photos show that dancers line up a bunch of prepared shoes in their space by their section of the mirrors for different acts and/or balets. Maybe now Womack has to keep hers in a locked box while they're out of her sight, which is most of the time she's in the theater. What does this mean? What is unclear?

There's been no connection yet between Dmitrienko or the thugs he hired and the cyberattacks. So far the police haven't mentioned the cyberattacks at all, and it isn't clear whether they tried to investigate or are still investigating. It took years and an international effort to bring down a Russian-based worldwide financial scam just recently, and cyberattacks on individuals are common enough that, in general, resources aren't assigned to them unless it's considered a matter of national security. Oligarchs can pay for their own investigations. If the cyberattacks were initiated by Dmitrienko, and masterminded only by him, then Yanin was lucky he was dumped at the first sign of controversy, or an attempt at blinding him might have been the next step. I don't know who assumed that Tsiskaridze was directly guilty -- I had someone else in mind -- although a proper investigation of the cyberattacks might prove otherwise, but that his vocal opposition and at least one prior attempt to depose Bolshoi management made him someone the police should investigate and eliminate from the list of suspects, if only to take the attention off of him, would be standard MO. I find it curious that he tried to argue that the attack had nothing to do with theater politics but had to do with a love affair or business dealings, when it was done on behalf of one his star pupils and had everything to do with theater politics, and while I wonder now how much he knew, that doesn't make him guilty of the actual plot. Taranda's assertion that this whole thing hurt Tsiskaridze more than Filin has made me lose all respect for a man I consider one of the greatest dancers I've ever see on film. Whether Tsiskaridze's criticism of the Bolshoi management has any merit has zero to do with the criminal physical and cyberattacks on Filin, unless one believes that these attacks are justified by aesthetic arguments, in this case a defense of the works of Grigorovich. Whether his criticism and internal plotting created an atmosphere which inspired at least the physical attacks is another story. The good news, if there's anything good to be found in this, is that the person behind the physical attacks is someone like-minded aesthetically with a personal grudge due to his wife/partner and a follower of sorts, which means a much smaller group of people needs to be discouraged than, for example, all of those important men with wives/girlfriends/daughters in the company. I hope Dmitrichenko gets jail time for this.

Carla Korbes and Karel Cruz performed a pas de deux from "Concerto DSCH" in Dallas for TITAS' 19th Command Performance. The article mentions that Korbes performed in the "Don Q" pas de deux, but doesn't mention a partner, who I'm assuming was Cruz. http://www.dallasnews.com/entertainment/headlines/20130303-ballet-stars-shine-in-contemporary-works-at-winspear.ece Edited to add: I missed this from"D Magazine'" which confirms that Cruz was Korbes partner in "Don Q."

The music is beautiful, the singing was fantastic, I loved what Girard and set designer Michael Levine did, but could the story be any more regressive in its view of women?

According to the "Oxford Music Dictionary" under "pop" I was using the more recent meaning of pop, into which category classic musicals, like "Carousel" and American Songbook composers don't fall. There were a number of musicals that were cast around opera singers, including Ezio "Sam and Janet Evening" Pinza, Lawrence Tibbett, and Georg Ots in Estonia, and Marilyn Horne sang for Dorothy Dandridge in "Carmen Jones." As musicals have gotten more "poppy" in musical style, most opera singers who record them sound stilted, but I find a closer affinity between opera singers and classic musicals, although opera singers are, by no means, universally successful in them.

Pop style is very different from Broadway musical style, unless the musical is pop style, like Rent. My favorite rendition of the tune Andrew Lloyd Webber stole from "La Fanciulla del West" "Music of the Night" is by Thomas Hampson. It also depends on how invested the singers are in the style; Blythe is one who is. The Three Tenors singing "Waltzing Mathilde": not so much.

According to the handout at today's "Met in HD" performance of "Parsifal," they're doing "Esmeralda" in Vancouver, too.

Thank you so much for the report, vipa! Blythe was deep into musical theater from at least high school, before she got into opera.

Maria Chapman will perform two solos from "Swan Lake" in the Olympia Dance Festival this Sunday, 3 March. http://www.theolympian.com/2013/03/01/2442209/olympia-dance-festival-will-feature.html?storylink=weekendnav