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Moscow Journal: A Tattered Theater Nears Return to Glory After Years of Delays
Drills and hammers fell silent as the Spanish tenor sang an aria from Tchaikovsky’s opera “The Queen of Spades,” his song captured last month on a shaky cellphone video, and when he was finished the workmen shouted, “Bravo!” After six years of delays, scandals, firings and resignations, huge cost overruns, and charges of embezzlement, as well as unforeseen architectural challenges on a mortally wounded building, the crown jewel of Russian arts is set at last to reopen on Oct. 28. Tickets for the rich, the beautiful and the well connected were available at the pleasure of the office of the president, said the Bolshoi’s general director, Anatoly G. Iksanov. For others who wish to watch in the cold, he said, the opening-night gala concert is to be shown on giant television screens installed in front of the theater. Its facade is still draped in green netting and its chairs and curtains are sheathed in plastic, but rehearsals on the new stage, home to the Bolshoi Ballet and the Bolshoi Opera, are scheduled to begin next month, after years of performances in a much more modest annex. “The Bolshoi is a home to me, and I will be glad to come back to my home,” Elena Obraztsova, the great mezzo-soprano, said in a telephone interview. “I’m happy <a href="http://www.trading666.com/rayban-sunglasses-rayban-AAA-sunglasses-f2-49-c3-66.html"><strong>cheap rayban sunglasses for sale </strong></a> that finally the Bolshoi is coming back to life and the old splendor is returned to it.” Mr. Domingo, who had been in Moscow for an opera competition, was quoted in the news media as saying that he liked the sound of the theater. The colonnaded, cream-colored theater, steadied on 7,000 new pilings, has been restored to its ornate czarist-era <a href="http://www.trading666.com/others-t1-29.html"><strong>cheap marlboro red cigarettes online </strong></a> glory, with a resonant violin-shaped auditorium, embroidered silk tapestries, painstakingly replicated spruce panels and papier-mâché decor and intricate gilding that sparkles in the light of a giant chandelier. At times the restoration has seemed like a scavenger hunt, with researchers discovering a factory that could duplicate the only two original floor tiles and another that matched a rediscovered swatch of the original upholstery, taking three years to weave about 820 yards of cloth. It has been a long, embarrassing and complex process, with deadlines set and missed since the theater closed for renovation in 2005 and with soaring costs, financed by the federal government, that have reached 760 million, according to the latest estimate by the Ministry of Culture. Built in 1825, the theater was almost destroyed by fire in 1853, and it reopened in 1856. It was struck by bombs during World War II and was used for political gatherings in Soviet times, when seating was expanded and repairs with inferior materials reduced its acoustic fidelity. The current restoration is by far the most extensive in the theater’s history, and officials say it was only after work began that builders and architects discovered how urgent it was. Before, said Mikhail Sidorov, a spokesman for Summa Capital, which has been the development company since 2009, “they did not and could not realize what a monstrously poor condition the building was in. The condition was not just critical, it was catastrophic and could collapse in parts or completely.” In an interview, Mr. Iksanov, the theater’s general director, said workers had joked that only the electrical wiring was holding up the building. Mr. Sidorov said that until the office of President Dmitri A. Medvedev took control of the project in 2009 management was “a madhouse,” with different departments issuing competing directives and working at cross purposes. “Theater administration tried to carry their point; Moscow city administration had <a href="http://www.trading666.com/brand-bags-t1-8.html"><strong>wholesale juicy handbags online</strong></a> their own ideas,” he said. “There was no one to speak up for the Bolshoi.” The first delay was announced in February 2008 when officials said the building’s facade was crumbling, its walls and columns marred by 17 vertical cracks and its foundation shifting dangerously. Engineers reportedly found the building to be “75 percent unstable.” A new date was set for the opening: Nov. 1, 2009.
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