Gala evenings, with their disruptive stop-go format and their inescapable lack of theatrical atmospherics, always promise more than they deliver. The moneyed audience that turns out for such events can bring out the lurking Bolshevik in one's soul, too. Yet this gala, first of two mounted by and for St Petersburg's Kirov opera and ballet company at Covent Garden this week, had far more artistic unity than most, as well as bags of artistic interest. For one thing, everyone in the pit or on the stage was Russian, as were most of the 12 items in the programme, while the exceptions had a direct St Petersburg connection. It is hard to think of any other company that could continue to showcase a national tradition in this way.
Anyone looking for evidence of new theatrical thinking from the pieces presented by the Kirov will have been disappointed, or perhaps relieved. But the strength in depth of the Kirov's artists was consistently impressive, especially among its roster of sopranos. Olga Trifonova sang her Cimarosa aria with creamy tone, Tatiana Pavlovskaya brought real vocal intelligence to the closing scene from Eugene Onegin, and Anna Netrebko made the most instantly characterful impact of them all, with her aria from Rimsky-Korsakov's The Tsar's Bride. By contrast, the great Olga Borodina seemed to be going through the motions in her Polish scene from Boris Godunov, though her voice was as magisterial as ever.
Rare live performances of small pieces by Rimsky-Korsakov, Glazunov and Anton Rubinstein gave the evening unusual curiosity value, and Yevgeny Nikitin made an outstanding impression in his aria from Rubinstein's The Demon. But Ludwig Minkus's reputation as possibly the worst composer of the 19th century survived intact: the excerpts from his ballet score for Don Quixote merely served to underline Tchaikovsky's true greatness.
The evening's three points of interpretive genius - the playing of the Mariinsky Orchestra, the conducting of Valery Gergiev, and the choreography of George Balanchine - all came together in Balanchine's flowing but enigmatic setting of Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings. This was given an outstanding, wonderfully alert performance under Gergiev and danced with bold fluency by the corps de ballet.
Opera's corresponding big scene was the Polovtsian dances from Borodin's Prince Igor; Nikolai Putilin was a fine Igor, but this seemed too much of a hollow showpiece compared with the Serenade for Strings. Gergiev and his superb orchestra were once again irresistibly impressive, though; they carried the evening against lurking doubts.
