STOP NATO: ¡NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------- ListBot Sponsor -------------------------- Get a low APR NextCard Visa in 30 seconds! 1. Fill in the brief application 2. Receive approval decision within 30 seconds 3. Get rates as low as 2.99% Intro or 9.99% Ongoing APR and no annual fee! Apply NOW! http://www.bcentral.com/listbot/NextCard ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [Via Communist Internet... http://www.egroups.com/group/Communist-Internet ] . . ----- Original Message ----- From: Downwithcapitalism <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, June 18, 2001 1:18 AM Subject: [downwithcapitalism] Even under capitalism, Russian artists defect Associated Press. 17 June 2001. Bolshoi Head Says Singer Defections Spurred Resignation. Comment at bottom. MOSCOW -- The former artistic director of Russia's Bolshoi Theater said Sunday that problems with a new production and the defections of key singers led to his resignation from the 225-year-old theater. Renowned conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky, who quit last week after one season, said his singers kept deserting rehearsals for better-paying jobs abroad. "It's impossible to condemn these people," he said on TV-6 television's Itogi program. "They want to eat." But the defections prevented him and the troupe from properly preparing the premier of his production of Prokofiev's opera "The Gambler," he said. He also cited critical attacks from the Moscow press as a reason for stepping down, and called it "strange" that Bolshoi executive director Anatoly Iksanov did not attend a single rehearsal for the new production. Rozhdestvensky was appointed to the post in a shake-up last fall, when President Vladimir Putin placed the ballet and opera theater under direct control of the Ministry of Culture. The ministry sacked the theater's then-artistic and general director, Vladimir Vasilyev, and divided his position between Rozhdestvensky and Iksanov. Rozhdestvensky expressed regret, saying that he took the job "full of determination to give the Bolshoi Theater all my strength and knowledge in order to restore the best traditions of the troupe." The theater has struggled with financial and administrative woes and what some have called a lack of artistic focus since the collapse of the Soviet-era system of support for the arts. <>--<>--<>--<>--<>--<>--<>--<>--<>--<>--<>--<>--<>--<>--<>--<> [NOTE. It has always been assumed that artists left the U.S.S.R., usually defecting to the U.S., because there was something oppressive about the arts, or life in general, in the U.S.S.R. The above suggests what many of us have always suspected: artists, the classic representatives of the petit-bourgeois, are simply quick to go where the money seems to be best, no ideological loyalties necessary.] * * * * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ______________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
