The Bolshoi celebrates renovation mondovision

The most famous Russian theater, the Bolshoi, the curtain rises Friday with a gala broadcast live in 36 countries to mark the end of huge work that has restored the building imperial luster. The diva Natalie Dessay French and Romanian Angela Gheorghiu will sing to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and his guests, who will also have the opportunity to admire the performance of Russian dance stars like Svetlana Zakharova, Natalia Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev. The concert will also provide a historical retrospective on the theater founded in 1776 and was the glory of Russian culture in all plans. The ceremony will be broadcast in Russia, the Franco-German TV ARTE and in 100 cinemas in the world. Fans can also watch it on Channel Bolshoi on YouTube in 36 countries.

No tickets were officially sold to the gala, said the director of the Bolshoi, Anatoly Iksanov, commenting on information circulating on the Internet that the price of a ticket on the black market reached 2 million rubles (about 50,000 euros). "This is the protocol department of the Kremlin who is in charge of invitations," he said. A situation denounced by music critics who were not invited. "It is absolutely inconceivable that the British government distributes tickets to an evening at Covent Garden. Tickets will be sold without a doubt. But here everything is done as usual in small groups", was an insurgent critical Marina Gaïkovitch, quoted by Interfax news agency.

The opening of the historic scene originally scheduled for 2008 has been repeatedly delayed and the work was marked by corruption scandals. Reconstruction, the official cost is 21 billion rubles (about 500 million euros), was on the one hand to stabilize the theater, run down to 70% and could collapse, and to secondly, to make it look he had in the nineteenth century to its heyday. Viewers will discover "an imperial theater and not that of the Soviet era" in which the curtain was decorated with the hammer and sickle, where Stalin gave speeches and which was announced the death of Lenin, said Mikhail Sidorov, representing the Summa company responsible for work since 2009. The arms of the Romanov family are thus re-emerged on the tapestry of imperial room where they were covered with globes or lyres in the Soviet era. After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the Communists have removed all references to the Tsarist regime at the Bolshoi, which hosted several congresses of the party.

The gilding of the room, damaged by improper maintenance during the Soviet era, have been redone with the old: seven layers were successively raised with the traditional base of egg whites, then cleaned with vodka and then polished with tails of squirrels.

More than a thousand expert opinions have been made to improve the acoustics of the theater, damaged by subway construction in the 1930s. Improved acoustics is that the concrete placed in the Soviet era in the orchestra pit was removed and the use of a fir tree to the qualities of particular resonance for the construction of signs placed in the room.

After the gala, the season will open Nov. 2 on the historical scene with Ruslan and Lyudmila by Glinka, directed by Dmitri Tcherniakov that revolutionized Russian opera.