Teamwork

Every summer, when foreign ballet companies invade New York with great blasts of publicity, there are people who pooh-pooh all the excitement, saying, in effect, “Who needs them? New York is the center of the world’s best ballet; it is the home of the most vigorous twentieth century dance traditions and of the most loyal audience.” They have a point if only because no one ever defects to the Bolshoi Ballet. On the other hand, of what use is a city like New York if it doesn’t serve as a meeting place for the best every nation has to show off—their best choreography or movies, fashions or food?

To the person interested in musical drama in all its national and cultural manifestations, the visit to the Metropolitan Opera House of the full company of the Bolshoi Opera Theatre was more than an incidental novelty or a fringe benefit of fighting Manhattan’s summer heat. It is not straining the word “revelation” to apply it to some of the work the company did here. Let it immediately be marked that this is not to say they are anyone’s idea of a hunky-dory opera troupe (for some of the singing would scarcely be countenanced in our better university opera workshops); it is to say that they demonstrated quite clearly what an opera company made up of dedicated professionals can do when it cannot draw upon the international star circuit for its casts, is somewhat cut off from good and bad trends in the world’s great opera houses, is obliged to keep all productions within certain governmentally prescribed and enforced bounds—but when funds and rehearsal time are no object. Let’s temporarily disregard the notorious disadvantages of their situation. Let’s even ignore for now the detente that brought them here on their first visit. We shall instead limit our present observations to a few points concerning the fruits by which we knew—and often admired—the Bolshoi.

RE

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Roger Evans

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Every summer, when foreign ballet companies invade New York with great blasts of publicity, there are people who pooh-pooh all the excitement, saying, in effect, “Who needs them? New York is the center of the world’s best ballet; it is the home of the most vigorous twentieth century dance traditions and of the most loyal audience.” They have a point if only because no one ever defects to the Bolshoi Ballet. On the other hand, of what use is a city like New York if it doesn’t serve as a meeting place for the best every nation has to show off—their best choreography or movies, fashions or food?

To the person interested in musical drama in all its national and cultural manifestations, the visit to the Metropolitan Opera House of the full company of the Bolshoi Opera Theatre was more than an incidental novelty or a fringe benefit of fighting Manhattan’s summer heat. It is not straining the word “revelation” to apply it to some of the work the company did here. Let it immediately be marked that this is not to say they are anyone’s idea of a hunky-dory opera troupe (for some of the singing would scarcely be countenanced in our better university opera workshops); it is to say that they demonstrated quite clearly what an opera company made up of dedicated professionals can do when it cannot draw upon the international star circuit for its casts, is somewhat cut off from good and bad trends in the world’s great opera houses, is obliged to keep all productions within certain governmentally prescribed and enforced bounds—but when funds and rehearsal time are no object. Let’s temporarily disregard the notorious disadvantages of their situation. Let’s even ignore for now the detente that brought them here on their first visit. We shall instead limit our present observations to a few points concerning the fruits by which we knew—and often admired—the Bolshoi.