Russian Ballet

(Please back date to 3/9/13)

Quick note: there are not a lot of photos in this post because there were not a lot of opportunities today where photos were allowed. Sorry!
 
I met a former Russian police officer in the hostel last night right before I fell asleep. He had walked in the room, asked me if I spoke Russian (he was unsure at first - apparently I’m starting to look and act like Russians), and after my, “Nyet,” and learning I was a foreigner, talked with me awhile. He’s here in St. Petersburg for the long, three day weekend (Women’s International Day was on Friday) on holiday with a friend. His name is Yuri, and he used to be a homicide detective but left the police because the job weighed down on him too much, too frequently, and so he is now working in the IT business. He’s 31 but looks 25. His friend is Anastasia, also a former detective, but is now teaching at the police academy in Khaborovsk where she lives. Anyway, after talking awhile, he invited me to breakfast with him and Anastasia the next morning. His English is pretty decent but I need to talk slowly for him to understand me. He kept reminding me of that.

I woke up around 9 in the morning, went to shower, and when I got out and walked from the door of the shower room, Yuri was sitting in the kitchen and, seeing me, told me very seriously to hurry up, he and Anastasia were waiting for me. I just looked at him and said, “Mmm, okay.” Last night he was pretty laid back and light hearted but this morning he had the serious demeanor of a Russian police officer. I have tried my hardest to avoid the police here in Russia. Everyone had warned me about them. But Yuri was not your average cop, he was a homicide detective who was now out of the business, I wasn’t exactly worried and I thought little of it last night but with the sudden change in mood, I was on my guard a bit this morning. Anastasia was polite but had a bit of an edge as well. Luckily, when we walked to the cafe that was just around the corner from the hostel, everyone seemed to relax a bit. I apologized for making them wait (even though I didn’t know we had a plan - frequent side effect of language barrier syndrome) and they quickly brushed it off, saying it was nothing. The rest of the breakfast went great and we talked about normal things. It was a weird start but a very cool and interesting breakfast. Apparently the homicide department of the police force in Russia is a taxing job (as I imagine it is in most places). That’s how they met and became friends but neither of them could do it for too long. I told them I was planning on going to the Hermitage today and they asked me why I’d want to do something like that, how boring the Hermitage must be. I told them I felt a little obligated to go - it’s one of the most famous places in St. Petersburg (and besides I kind of go for art and museums and stuff). They were off to meet some friends later in the day for Chinese food and invited me along but I politely declined, thanking them for the offer. I knew the Hermitage would take up my whole day and I had ballet tickets for later in the evening. So when we were through, I walked back to the hostel after breakfast, put on my new collared shirt, and walked to the Hermitage.

The Hermitage is one of Russia’s largest museums, housing a collection of fine art from within Russia and from around the world. The building itself is the old, Imperial palace that housed many of the royal families during the Imperial period, called the White Palace, borders the Neva River, and is one of the most stunning buildings I’ve ever been inside. The palace consists of room after room after room, conjoining in orderly rows for up to three floors. Swooping balconies overlook the large entrance halls and broad staircases, bedecked with golden chandeliers and paintings on the ceilings lead up and down in several different areas of the palace. The palace itself is so large that you could easily spend days just slowly wandering around the halls, let alone exploring all the smaller passageways that are off limits to tourists. Each hall room stores a collection of art, mainly European paintings from 18th-20th centuries, and a large collection of Russian imperial artifacts as well as some smaller collections of Far East and North African art. I wandered up to the second floor, the main floor for exhibits, and into one of the very large rooms, ceilings 30 feet high, huge chandelier hanging in the center of the room. A small crowd had gathered near the center when a quartet of men emerged and sang a very beautiful tune. The acoustics in the room were quite good, the deep sounds resonating within the space. The bass singer made sounds I didn’t know were possible, just these rumbling noises originating from deep within the depths of his body somewhere. I could feel their vibrations.

I wandered around more of the exhibits. I’ll be a little critical here. The collection of art in the Hermitage is incredible but I will admit that the presentation is a little below average, especially for art museums with such international reputation. There seemed to be a lot of information about paintings in Russian but little or no English was to be found (although to be honest this turned out to be sort of a blessing - if I had been reading too much I wouldn’t have made it through a quarter of the Hermitage before closing time). And there were no camera signs posted everywhere, which didn’t stop the tourists, naturally, but what bothered me about it (besides the fact that I stupidly obeyed the rule and left my camera at coat check) was that the old babushka ladies that worked in the museum just sat on by and allowed the tourists to snap away. I’ve seen it in many, many other Russian museums where babushkas would scold the tourist into the ground, as if they had committed mortal sin. But these babushkas had appeared to have given up, most of them sleeping in their chairs. It was kind of sad. By contrast, the Tretyakov Museum in Moscow was spot on when it came to signs in English and sharp babushkas.

But like I said the art collection itself was amazing and the art easily could talk for itself, I didn’t need much for amplifying information. My favorite room was the Rembrandt collection. I don’t know a lot about the different types of art, I am more of a casual admirer, but I really liked Rembrandt and his style of painting. He tended to use (at least in this collection) very dark colors in his paintings, mainly portraits or scenes of two or three people. Many, many shades of just really dark colors which left a lot of the background unknown and open to mystery. And his lines weren’t clean and his painting didn’t offer intense details in his subjects, rather they were blurred and faded a little, using a painting technique that emphasized color rather than lines and detail. My favorite of these was called “Haman Recognizes His Fate”, painted in 1663, which depicts a man in an eastern Turban, with two men behind him. The man looks as if he suddenly received the worst news of his life and it hadn’t sunk in yet, like he was confused. Rembrandt captured this delicate emotion affected by that particular moment in time perfectly. It’s an incredible painting.

The Hermitage also had impressive collections from other European stars like Da Vinci, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Matisse, Picasso, Monet, Renoir, etc. I like mainly the 17th and 18th century art, the 19th and 20th centuries produced a lot of weird stuff (just my opinion). After five hours of wandering around the palace and staring at paintings, I became a little stir crazy and fatigued and had wanted to rest a little before the ballet so I made my way back to the hostel. I passed some really interesting horse and buggy carriages outside the Hermitage entrance, for tourists, but they looked like they were straight out of a Dickens novel. The horses were trotting around the cobblestone square in front of the palace.

Snow recently fallen in front of the Hermitage, the White Palace

Horse and buggy in front of the Hermitage

The square in front of the White Palace in late afternoon

I did get some rest, freshened up, and made my way to the ballet.

Before I left Moscow, Yana had been searching online for any available tickets in either Moscow or St. Petersburg for a chance for me to see the ballet. She knew I was interested and that the ballet this time of year is very popular and tickets were hard to obtain any time of year. She managed to find me one, reasonably priced ticket to see “Spartacus” at the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory in St. Petersburg. The conservatory is a famous Russian school for performance art and has graduated such gems as Tchaikovsky, the famous Russian composer, probably most famous for writing the ballets of The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, and Sleeping Beauty. But I was here to watch Spartacus, written by Aram Khachaturian in 1954 who was later awarded the Lenin Prize for his efforts. Spartacus, briefly, is a story about King Spartacus of Thrace, enslaved when his kingdom was overrun by Crassus and the Romans, forced into the arena as a gladiator, is forced to kill his best friend, and then incites the other captive gladiators to rebellion. Spartacus, recently freed, is eventually discovered and murdered when one of his rebellion mates is seduced by Crassus’ (wife, adulteress, handmade?). It’s a cool story.

I had no problems finding the conservatory and no problems with the dress code. Most people were dressed fairly nicely (it is Russia after all) but I certainly did not stand out and was not the least well dressed in the crowd - but I was glad I had bought the collared shirt. Before the performance, I sat in my seat and people watched a little. There were obvious, former ballerinas in the audience. They were easy to spot because of their body type, excellent posture, and slight chip on their shoulder. Some of them brought their daughters who eagerly sat in their seats, jumping around waiting for the curtain to rise. And during the performance, it was interesting to watch as many of the little girls in the audience would get carried away and start raising their arms in the air whenever the prima ballerina would raise her arms on stage. Their mothers had to calm them down a little. The prima ballerina, speaking of which, was well worthy of her title. She stood out clearly from the others by the quality of the performance she gave. She was very serious but very care free and loose at the same time. The stage was set with drapes to imitate the Colosseum and had a large, crumbling stone face in the middle. And as I said before, the people watching was part of the entertainment as well. Fancy women with their rich boyfriends, refined elderly couples, some solo, gorgeous, young women, maybe former ballerinas themselves. It was a pretty cool atmosphere and one of the cooler things I did in Russia.

I walked back from the ballet pretty late in the evening (the ballet was over three hours long), stopped at the market for some food, and returned to the hostel. I am planning on meeting up with Victor and Marina and their daughter again for a tour of St. Petersburg’s famous Kirov Museum, a preserved Soviet apartment, and for a sampling of Russian peryogi at one of the cities finest cafes. And then I think we are going to take the train to their suburban town and spend the evening in their home. I’m very excited for this.