The Guardian (UK)
February 2, 2015
Donetsk opera house: tanks on the street but the show must go on
The city's opera house remains open despite the dangers posed by the
conflict between local separatists and Ukrainian forces
By Shaun Walker in Donetsk
By now in Donetsk, everyone from children to pensioners can
differentiate between the sound of incoming and outgoing fire, or
identify a mortar or Grad rocket from its pitch. At the Donbass Opera,
however, people are given very different choices to stimulate the
senses: Verdi or Puccini; Strauss or Bizet.
In a city where armed men in camouflage ride down the main street in
tanks, more than half of the residents have fled and most shops and
restaurants are closed, opera should perhaps be the last thing on
anyone's mind. But remarkably, and against all the odds, the city's
opera house has remained open, despite the fact that none of the
troupe have been paid in months, all four conductors have left town
and the singers take a risk every time they travel to work. It is a
risk, however, that they say is worth it.
"Even if people don't come, they know the theatre is open, and that in
itself is a big boost: it makes things seem more normal," said
baritone Sergei Dubnitsky, who last Sunday sang the lead in Die
Fledermaus, Johann Strauss's hammy comedy of mistaken identities. In
addition to taking on leading operatic parts, he has learned to
conduct and picked up the baton to conduct La Traviata at the weekend.
"Whenever you perform, you can sense from the stage what kind of
connection you are making with the audience, whether the audience is
engaged. Of course there are productions that are better or worse than
others, but overall it has become much easier to find those
connections, people are much more engaged."
It may seem odd to hum along to operatic farce when just a few miles
away there are frontlines, but the audience appears genuinely
delighted as the singers prance around the stage during Die
Fledermaus. The production radiates lightheartedness and innocence -
qualities in short supply in today's Donetsk.
"When you are surrounded by ugliness, beauty becomes something you
cherish even more," said Galina, a 42-year-old nurse, who had brought
her two teenage children to the theatre to cheer them up.
A striking, Stalinist neoclassic building on Donetsk's main
thoroughfare, the theatre was opened in April 1941, months before the
Nazi occupation of Stalino, as the city was called. The 960-seat
auditorium has a sense of grandeur; the ornate foyer features busts of
Russian and Ukrainian literary greats Alexander Pushkin and Taras
Shevchenko.
So far, none of the theatre employees has been among the more than
5,000 people who have died since the conflict between local
separatists backed by Russia and Ukrainian forces loyal to Kiev began.
But the troupe has not escaped unscathed. Last weekend a shell caused
serious damage to the apartment of one of the leading soloists. In
September, the theatre's warehouse on the outskirts of town was hit by
a shell. The stage decorations for a number of productions, including
The Flying Dutchman, the theatre's calling card, were destroyed.
Before the new season in October, Vasily Ryabenky, who had led the
theatre for more than two decades, gathered the collective and asked
whether they could carry on. Everyone said they should and they agreed
to put on Die Fledermaus on 4 October.
"Tickets were free and there were hundreds of people queuing," said
the deputy director, Natalia Kovalyova. "People were upset they
couldn't get in. In the end we had people sitting on the steps,
standing in the wings, we crammed in as many as we could. Two old
ladies were in tears, on their knees and kissing his hands in
gratitude that he had opened the season."
Three days later, Ryabenky, 55, collapsed and died from a heart attack
his colleagues are convinced came about through the stress of keeping
the theatre open in such trying conditions. He was replaced by a local
museum director, and the rest of the collective decided they had to go
ahead with the season.
Due to the security situation, performances now only take place during
daylight hours and only on weekends. Last weekend, the Saturday
performance of La Bohème was cancelled due to a day of mourning for
eight people killed when a trolleybus stop in Donetsk was attacked
with mortars two days previously.
The Sunday performance of Die Fledermaus was also in danger of
cancellation, after mortar damage to the local power station cut power
to the opera house an hour before the 2pm start time. But at 2.29pm,
amid the rumbling of artillery in the distance, the lights flickered
back on and the 200 or so people waiting outside let out a cheer. The
actors warmed up, got into their costumes and had their makeup put on
in the space of 15 minutes, and the show began.
"There have been a couple of occasions when the shelling has got close
to the centre and we've had to get everyone into the bomb shelter in
the basement," said Igor Ivanov, the deputy director of the theatre.
"But it's never happened in a performance - everyone is too busy
listening to the music."
Indeed, music is not just a balm for the soul, it is also a way of
shutting out the endless sound of artillery.
"At home, the walls are always shaking," said 80-year-old Lidia
Kachalova, who has been at the theatre since 1958, first as a soloist
and now as a stage manger. She lives near Donetsk's railway station,
an area that has seen heavy fighting in recent months, and refuses to
leave the city even though most of her family have gone to western
Ukraine.
"My life is here, my apartment is here, my husband's grave is here.
How I can I leave the place where my husband is buried? My son calls
me and tells me to leave, to come and stay with him. But I'm not going
to leave my own apartment. I just put on some good music, turn up the
volume, and think good thoughts."
Dubnitsky has thought about leaving many times. "Maybe it sounds
pretentious, but I think we have a certain moral obligation to stay,"
he said. "We have our performances, our audience, our city to think
about. You can treat wounds with medicines, but art is medicine for
the soul."
Anna Netrebko, the Russian soprano, caused a political storm when she
donated 1m roubles (about £9,500) to the theatre in December, mainly
because she handed it to one of the separatist political leaders, and
then posed with a flag of Novorossia, the self-declared political
entity encompassing much of eastern Ukraine.
Netrebko said she did not know what the flag was until it was too
late, but that has not stopped her from garnering criticism, and she
was accosted by a man waving a Ukrainian flag as she basked in
applause at the curtain call at the Metropolitan Opera in New York on
Friday.
But in Donetsk there is gratitude for the money, which was delivered
to the theatre in a sack, in cash. Everyone from the general director
to the cleaners were given 3,000 roubles as a one-off payment, said
Kovalyova, and the remainder was used to pay for medicines.
Artists have received only one, reduced, salary payment in the past
half a year, so the money was acutely needed. Others have offered
donations, but the theatre is unable to accept them, as, like everyone
else in Donetsk, they are unable to access its bank account. Many find
themselves unable to pay for basic needs, but go on performing.
Inside the troupe, people try not to talk about politics, but it is
clear that here too there are divisions. One of the leading sopranos
travelled to Kiev to receive an award from President Petro Poroshenko
in November, while another group of singers performed a hospital
concert for wounded separatist fighters last Thursday, wishing them a
speedy recovery and exhorting them to victory.
"I don't know who is right and who is wrong, maybe only in heaven they
know. All I know is that this shouldn't happen," said Kachalova,
shaking her head. "Everyone supposedly has brains, everyone appears to
be educated, and everyone is an adult. What is the problem, then? How
can they let this happen?"
Her solution to the madness is musical: "You leave the house in the
morning, and there's ice on the ground, wind in your face, snow
falling, and the sound of bombs exploding everywhere. What can be
better than to walk along and sing Strauss to yourself?"
[return to Contents]
_______________________________________________
pen-l mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
