The Bolshoi Theater, newly reopened after years of remodeling, is now battling a string of bad publicity incidents, though it is performing its ballets and operas to full-house audiences.
Muscovites reeled all fall when demand for Bolshoi tickets led to a prolific scalper bloom and tickets selling for up to 10 times their face value. The ticket mafia, loathed throughout the blogosphere, even inspired a scathing reportage from Afisha magazine, which called the situation “organized impunity,” implying that the Bolshoi’s management was tolerating the chaos for some unstated reason. In response, the theater introduced a policy where spectators would have to present their passports at the box office, and then again at the doors.
Just as a solution was found to this problem, two of the Bolshoi’s most famous dancers, Natalia Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev, announced that they were leaving the Bolshoi to join the Mikhailovsky Theatre, a small but generously funded venue in St. Petersburg. The married couple* said they want were seeking greater creative freedom and a chance to break from the Bolshoi’s restrictive classic repertoire.
The restored Bolshoi Theater has something to offer those with no patience for waiting in ticket lines: it is now offering tours of the newly opened building. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, for 500 rubles, you can take a 45-minute guided tour that includes the imperial foyer – previously closed to the public. The stage itself is off-limits, but the tour does visit the main hall as well as the new underground level, below the Bolshoi fountain.
Russia’s Hermitage museum in St. Petersburg, will open its own small Fabergé collection when it finishes restoration of the museum’s eastern wing for its 250th anniversary in 2014. The exhibit will include famous jewelry pieces and, sketches of same from Carl Fabergé’s workshop. Several of the works were in the Hermitage’s storage and have been restored thanks to private donations.
Starting in 2012, some Moscow museums will offer free admission on the third Sunday of the month. The new rules affect smaller museums that are regulated by the city of Moscow. See bit.ly/moscowmuseums for a full list. The museums will also work late on Thursdays, closing at 9 p.m., thereby adopting a schedule popular in European museums.
A Radisson hotel will be built in Sochi not far from the Olympic venues in the city’s south. Radisson Blu Resort & Congress Hotel is expected to open in 2013 on the Black Sea coast, and will have 500 rooms. The hotel will include restaurants, tennis courts, pools, and a congress center for hosting conferences. The Rezidor Hotel Group already manages the Radisson Lazurnaya in central Sochi (prices start at R5750, or $185 per night). It is also expected to open another property in the mountains, at the Rosa Khutor ski resort.
Moscow’s oldest cinema house, Khudozhestvenny, which opened in 1909, will be closed in 2012 for a two-year renovation. The theater has been rebuilt several times before, the first time just three years after it opened, due to demand far beyond its initial seating capacity of 400.
Khudozhestvenny was known as a theater for Moscow intellectuals and white collar workers, and was long the most fashionable venue in Moscow. Today it frequently presents mainstream movies but also hosts opera evenings and has a special hall for cartoons. The owners have vowed, through the renovation, to restore the theaters original 1909 exterior.
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