The Mariinsky in Moscow is always an event. To say nothing of its performing for nearly two weeks which is to happen when the company come on their tour in Moscow which is to take place from May 23 to June 4. Their latest large-scale tour took place in the time when the Bolshoi was being run by Vladimir Vasiliev. The number of operas and ballets performed by the Mariinsky Company on the Bolshoi stage then was extraordinary – about ten operas and ten ballets. 1998 is a crucial year in the history of both companies – this is the year that they exchanged tours – the Muscovites came to St-Pete while the Mariinsky were guesting in Moscow. The Bolshoi then exported quite a number of its opera and ballet products, too. This reciprocal arrangement made the ice melt - eased the atmosphere and added warmth to the relations between the two best national theatre companies. Ever since the St-Peterburgians have been regularly appearing on the Bolshoi stage – either to take part in another «Golden Mask» festival or to introduce their repertoire innovations to the highbrow and sophisticated Moscow audience, just for one or two days. Ballet productions account for most of their repertoire for Moscow. Both of the companies seem to be happy about exchanging stars as well, and sometimes the Mariinsky Company stars participate in the productions by the Bolshoi. For instance, Svetlana Zakharova two years ago radically changed her life and joined the Bolshoi Company.

Very little time has passed since the heated discussions about the latest ‘Mask’ festival wore off, including those of the Forsythe program shown on the New Stage and the actors will be soon packing for the new Moscow tour which is planned for the end of May. The tour’s playbill, despite the tough schedule, includes two full-fledged ballets, a one-act ballets night and a four-night-long Der Ring des Nibelungen.
The ballet troupe is avant guarde. And at once the main trump: "La Bayadere " (May 23), yet it is not the simple contemporary version but the version of 1900, revived by Sergey Vikharev. How many lances have been broken in the disputes about authenticity of reconstructed ballets! All seems to be nothing to Sergey Vikharev. He keeps doing his work and brilliantly, by the way! While reconstructing the canvas of a ballet he makes use of choreographic notes, old scores and archive researches. Just like an archaeologist who clears away the centuries-old layers, Sergey Vikharev has given new life to great ballets The Sleeping Beauty, La Bayadere, Petrushka which he reconstructed for the Mariinsky, while Koppelia and Don Quixote for the Novosibirsk Theatre Company. Wherever they are shown, those new old ballets The Sleeping Beauty or La Bayadere, everywhere they receive very warm welcome, they win the public, with nobody aside and indifferent. The Sleeping Beauty is to be followed by La Bayadere, Marius Petipa's sacred ballet that now in its original four acts, not in three, will come to Moscow for the first time. In the textbooks on the ballet history some very esteemed ballet historians wrote that Act 4 is lost forever. Here you are it’s been found! And moreover, it abounds in dancing charms, for example, the Pas Des Trois of Hamzatti, Solor and Nikia-Shadow, it’s really worth seeing! The only thing to do is to buy tickets in time for this ballet feast.

Straight afterwards three one-act ballets are served on one program: The Wedding Party by Bronislava Nijinskaya, Harald Lander’s Etudes, with Reverance by David Douson between them. The Wedding Party to Igor Stravinsky’s music, the original score of 1923, is more than just a ballet staged by a Russian 'horsewoman' Natalia Goncharova. Actually it's not a ballet in essence but a chain of "choreographic scenes with singing and music", that is her own description of the product. Ingenious Vaclav Nijinsky’s sister choreographed the ancient Russian peasant rite of wedding. This piece of choreography, which wasn’t accepted and recognised by contemporaries today, is classics of constructive choreography. Kasyan Goleysovsky went the same path and Fyodor Lopukhov as well, though less obviously. Etudes is the hymn to the daily exercise, ballet staged to the music by Carl Cherni. Lander's production revealing elements and composition of a ballet class, exercises "at the bar" and "in the middle", was shown first at the Danish Royal Ballet (1948) and then at the Paris Opera House (1952). It is the Paris version that is on at the Mariinsky now. This ballet is a perfect demonstration of the highest professional level of the troupe because the dancers are to show the whole arsenal of movements learnt at school and constantly repeated in a rehearsal room. The 22-minute-long Reverance to the music by Gavin Bryers is the Mariinsky Company's latest acquisition. But it seems strange that this opus, cursed by the critics, at the last moment was included in the playbill replacing the evident and absolute masterpiece La Serenada by Balanchine, which earlier had been part of the tour program.

On May 25, Balanchine’s Jewellery will be closing the ballet program of the tour (instead of the Forsythe ballets announced before). Having been shown in Moscow twice the production does not need advertising. This three-act composition contains the quietly flickering Emeralds to the music by Gabriel Faure, the madly sparkling Rubies to the music by Stravinsky and the glamorous Diamonds grown and magnificently thriving on Petr Tchaikovsky's music. The main intrigue is 'who is dancing'? Alas, the Mariinsky Company are staggering with the answer.

The upcoming Der Ring des Nibelungen deserves to be described an event in history. Earlier Gergiev undertook a kind of reconnaissance in Moscow with his Das Rheingold and Die Walkure, but this time he is bringing the whole of Wagner’s tetralogy. At the Ìàriinsky this grand project was made by Master Valery Gergiev together with scene designer Georgy Tsypin. In the winter of 2004 the untiring Gergiev showed his Der Ring des Nibelungen in Baden-Baden. The production drew the highest response from the critics, e.g. The New York Times wrote: "...This Ring ranks with the four or five most significant productions ever made since the middle of the last century". The Wagner tetralogy is highly demanding to both performers and spectators. The shortest opera Das Rheingold – the prologue – lasts about three hours uninterrupting and the final part of the tetralogy Gotterdammerung is five-and-a-half-hours long. At the Bolshoi Das Rheingold conducted by Valery Gergiev will be shown on May 31, Die Walkure - on June 1, Siegfried on June 3 (beginning at 18.00), Gotterdammerung - on June 4 (beginning at 18.00).

To reciprocate the Bolshoi will bring to St.-Petersburg its Romeo and Juliet by Radu Poclitaru and Declan Donnellan (on 4th and 5th of July) and the triad of Massyne’s ballets (on July 6) within the framework of the XIII International Festival Stars of the White Nights. The St-Pete audience will be able to do justice to our opera in the autumn. On the stage of the Mariinsky Theatre the operas Rosental’s Children and Der Fliegende Hollander will be shown on 11-18 of October.