Day two in St. Petersburg was spent in the Hermitage Museum. Incredible place - way too much to see in one visit. We spent much of our time seeing the incredible paintings by Titian, Raphael, Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rubens, Van Dyck, and the Van Gogh's and Matisse's they have.
The museum is an interesting place. On one hand, they have hundreds of thousands of priceless objects, and have begun to capitalize on tourists with gift shops etc... yet on the other hand there are still remnants of the Soviet days. The guards are a group of senior women, dressed in haggard, dark, colorless and lifeless dresses who sit in each room chit-chatting in corners oblivious to the art, others are sleeping, and yet others are just staring out the windows!
Two experiences to share with these women, in one gallery i accidentally took a flash photo of a Raphael (photo attached), and one of these women started to scream at me, and she said in complete and good English (HEY YOU! HAVE YOU NEVER BEEN IN A MUSEUM BEFORE! WHAT ARE YOU DOING!) I was surprised by this verbal assault coming from this older woman, and it was clear I hadn't been the first recipient of this upbraiding.
Second, One woman, in a gallery that included some Matisse masterpiece opened some windows because she was warm, right in the gallery. When our guide shut them, saying the snow coming in the gallery was not good for the paintings, she retorted, I learned "I can close the windows when i want them. When told these were bad for the paintings, she said, these paintings have been here for nearly 200 years and are fine!!
Anyway, i saw a performance by the Maly Theatre in a new adapation of the 1959 Wassily Grossman book Life and Fate. It was an incredible, but nearly 4 hours, that looked at WWII, and the relations of people both in German and Russian concentration camps, the fascists v. communists the collaboration of Stalin and Hitler, and the role of the Communist party. Obviously, not a picker-upper... but incredibly powerful. The produciton featured supertitles. The main prop on stage was a huge steel fence that spanned the width of the stage on a diagonal. It was a packed house but its clear Russians dont have the girth of Americans as the seats were very narrow and I felt like a sardine. Also, it was a billion degrees inside.
We met the esteemed director Lev Donin and are having dinner with him on Tue after another performance by the company of Uncle Vanya. They havent been to america since 02 and to bring them to CH doing both Life and Fate and Uncle Vanya would be great.
Its a blizzard outside and in the temp is in the single digits.....
We visit the St. Petersburg Conservatory tomorrow....
Big news all over Russia today is the Parliamentary Elections which took place earlier on Sunday. As of this moment, they project Putin's United Russia party with a landslide victory of 60% of the vote. this comes with 300 out of 400 seats in parliament. Nearly all the arts professionals we met today were disappointed but not surprised and all believe that Putin will indeed carry through on his promise that he will become Prime Minister even as he steps down after 8 years as President..Another note, the Communist Party won 11% of the vote too....
Incredible.
Photos attached....
The museum is an interesting place. On one hand, they have hundreds of thousands of priceless objects, and have begun to capitalize on tourists with gift shops etc... yet on the other hand there are still remnants of the Soviet days. The guards are a group of senior women, dressed in haggard, dark, colorless and lifeless dresses who sit in each room chit-chatting in corners oblivious to the art, others are sleeping, and yet others are just staring out the windows!
Two experiences to share with these women, in one gallery i accidentally took a flash photo of a Raphael (photo attached), and one of these women started to scream at me, and she said in complete and good English (HEY YOU! HAVE YOU NEVER BEEN IN A MUSEUM BEFORE! WHAT ARE YOU DOING!) I was surprised by this verbal assault coming from this older woman, and it was clear I hadn't been the first recipient of this upbraiding.
Second, One woman, in a gallery that included some Matisse masterpiece opened some windows because she was warm, right in the gallery. When our guide shut them, saying the snow coming in the gallery was not good for the paintings, she retorted, I learned "I can close the windows when i want them. When told these were bad for the paintings, she said, these paintings have been here for nearly 200 years and are fine!!
Anyway, i saw a performance by the Maly Theatre in a new adapation of the 1959 Wassily Grossman book Life and Fate. It was an incredible, but nearly 4 hours, that looked at WWII, and the relations of people both in German and Russian concentration camps, the fascists v. communists the collaboration of Stalin and Hitler, and the role of the Communist party. Obviously, not a picker-upper... but incredibly powerful. The produciton featured supertitles. The main prop on stage was a huge steel fence that spanned the width of the stage on a diagonal. It was a packed house but its clear Russians dont have the girth of Americans as the seats were very narrow and I felt like a sardine. Also, it was a billion degrees inside.
We met the esteemed director Lev Donin and are having dinner with him on Tue after another performance by the company of Uncle Vanya. They havent been to america since 02 and to bring them to CH doing both Life and Fate and Uncle Vanya would be great.
Its a blizzard outside and in the temp is in the single digits.....
We visit the St. Petersburg Conservatory tomorrow....
Big news all over Russia today is the Parliamentary Elections which took place earlier on Sunday. As of this moment, they project Putin's United Russia party with a landslide victory of 60% of the vote. this comes with 300 out of 400 seats in parliament. Nearly all the arts professionals we met today were disappointed but not surprised and all believe that Putin will indeed carry through on his promise that he will become Prime Minister even as he steps down after 8 years as President..Another note, the Communist Party won 11% of the vote too....
Incredible.
Photos attached....
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