Kommersant: "Celebrating Boris Yeltsin at the Bolshoi"
Yesterday a gala concert to celebrate the 80th birthday of Russia's first President, Boris Yeltsin, took place at the Bolshoi Theatre. It opened with the overture to The Force of Destiny by Giuseppe Verdi, performed by the theatre's Symphony Orchestra. The audience listened to classics -- Gaetano Donizetti's Love Drink, Georges Bizet's Carmen, Giacomo Puccini's La Bohema, Pyotr Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, and a symphony by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The programme was crowned with the Glory chorus from Mikhail Glinka's A Life for the Tsar. On September 1, 1992 Yeltsin listened to this opera. When asked whether he came because of the opening of a new season or because of an interest in this particular opera, he said: "I came for both reasons. I like this opera. Nobody goes to a theatre for political reasons."
Security measures at the theatre were tighter but reasonable. Traffic on Bolshaya Dmitrovka Street was closed for a short time basically when Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Patriarch Kirill arrived at the theatre. Putin was a little late – about 20 minutes. Tennis coach Shamil Tarpishchev and tennis player Marat Safin sat in the middle of the hall. The first rows were occupied by Sergei Shoigu, Alexei Kudrin, Vladimir Kozhin, Dmitry Kozak, Ilya Klebanov, Vladimir Resin and Leonid Tyagachyov. Mikhail Kasyanov, Mikhail Prokhorov, Fyodor Bondarchuk, Alexander Rodnyansky, Dmitry Zelenin, Alexei Venediktov and many other well known people were seen in the orchestra box seats. Finally Galina Vishnevskaya, Naina Yeltsin and Lyudmila Putin appeared in the hall. Vladimir Putin took the floor to tell the audience what a man Yeltsin was. The concert finished late in the evening with a banquet in the theatre's atrium.
By Yevgeniya Milova
