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Article: Ballet Spins Into Chaos;Bolshoi Strike Splits Moscow Culture World
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- March 15, 1995
- Author:
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For the first time in its 219-year history, the show at the
Bolshoi Theater last Friday did not go on. And that, in the opinion
of many Russians, said as much about this nation's sad decline as any
statistic on inflation, death rates or bribes.
"A Big Shame," the Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper mourned on its
front page today. "Collapse of the Bolshoi Theater Is a Crime Before
Russian Culture," Izvestia agreed in its front-page banner headline.
Russians long have viewed the Bolshoi, a classical jewel of a
theater facing the Kremlin, as the purest vessel for their beloved
operas and ballets -- for composers such as Glinka and Tchaikovsky,
for dancers from Galina Ulanova to Maya Plisetskaya. As ...