Gergiev: Maestro on A Mission

Coddling an Italian tenor fighting a cold. Teasing another half-hour out of an orchestra to rehearse it to its finest edge. Assuaging the fears of the governor's men about crowd control at an open-air concert by Placido Domingo. For some, it could be trying. But for Valery Gergiev, the super-maestro at the helm of St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Theater, it's just another day at the office.

Gergiev is one of the most sought-after directors in the world. With his rugged flair, artistic zealotry and business acumen, he has evolved into that rare species: a classical music megastar. A son of the Caucasus, Gergiev has in his 49th year hit full flight, winning over aesthetes from New York to London to Tokyo. But his greatest ambitions remain in his homeland, where he has grand ideas for a Mariinsky makeover to rival that of New York's Lincoln Center or London's Covent Garden.

This month, St. Petersburg hosts Gergiev's eighth annual White Nights festival. With more than 40 performances in 30 days, it is a testament to the Mariinsky's depth and its maestro's dynamism. The festival not only celebrates the Mariinsky's own stars, but also features Placido Domingo (singing Siegmund and conducting Aida), as well as young singers and musicians from the Mariinsky academies. "We do it all," says Gergiev. "Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, of course, but Verdi and Wagner are also very respected in this house. We do more Verdi than most Italian companies. If Russians can sing Verdi at La Scala, Covent Garden and the Met, why shouldn't they do it here?"

For decades the Mariinsky and Moscow's Bolshoi were locked in a fierce rivalry, but the competition is over. As the Mariinsky soars and tours wherever Gergiev wishes, the Bolshoi in its 225th year is fighting artistic and physical decay. unesco has launched a campaign to restore its crumbling Moscow theater, but last week, after just one season, Gennadi Rozhdestvensky quit as the Bolshoi's artistic director. He had renewed the Bolshoi's repertoire and brought hope. But his sudden exit is sure to prolong the Bolshoi's woes. And there is no answer when Gergiev runs his long fingers down a poster listing the ballet, opera and symphonic performances of his festival and asks, "When could the Bolshoi do something like this?"

A son of a Soviet colonel, Gergiev was raised among the hirsute footballers of Vladikavkaz, capital of the tiny republic of North Ossetia in southern Russia. After studying conducting under Ilya Musin at the Leningrad Conservatory, he won the Herbert von Karajan Competition in Berlin at age 23 and two years later conducted his first opera, Prokofiev's War and Peace. He was 35 when the Kirov, as the Mariinsky was known during the Soviet era, voted him its head conductor. In the dozen years since, he has not let up. He has brought Wagner to St. Petersburg and has taken Prokofiev to New York's Metropolitan Opera. He has revised and renewed a host of musty Soviet operas — most recently War and Peace in a blazing production. In 1997, he became the Met's first-ever principal guest conductor. In addition to regular gigs in Vienna, London and Salzburg, he runs the Rotterdam Philharmonic Gergiev Festival in Holland. Critics suggest he is getting overextended; friends worry about his stamina.

But perhaps he has only just begun. Having seen the recent renaissance of Lincoln Center and Covent Garden, Gergiev looks across the canal behind the Mariinsky to New Holland island — a disused and decaying Soviet military complex — and dreams of a new home for the Mariinsky that would enhance the theater's commercial foundation. The money to build it, he insists, abounds. "How many billions left Russia illegally in recent years?" he asks. "Someone will take this chance."

The cost of the undertaking hovers in the hundreds of millions of dollars, but Gergiev boasts an enviable record of reaping private and state support. The Cuban-born opera patron Alberto Vilar, a tech-stock multibillionaire, has pledged an estimated $20 million. "And the state,"

Gergiev adds, "is not going to stay totally unmoved by the idea." He and Vladimir Putin are old friends from Putin's days as deputy mayor of St. Petersburg. And Sergei Roldugin, the godfather of Putin's elder daughter, plays cello in Gergiev's orchestra.

Gergiev also has plenty of detractors. Few in the opera world question his credentials, but some fear his appetite. "He's an amazing musical machine," says a former administrator at the Met. "But there's a fear that he spreads himself too thinly." Russian conductors fume, sotto voce, that he has usurped the state budget and stolen the limelight. Others claim that his success derives chiefly from a talent for ingratiating himself with the powers that be — accumulating what's known in Russian as blat, clout more fungible than cash. Their fears are numerous and wild: that Gergiev is a front man for the Caucasian mafia, that he knows no boundaries, that he is after the state budget and, most of all, the Bolshoi. Of the talk of a Bolshoi takeover, the maestro only scoffs, "What would I do with it?" As for rumors that he would leave for the Met, he replies: "I have responsibility here. Two thousand people work in this house. And we have a quality here that I think is rare."

Gergiev insists that the Mariinsky stands on its own. "Think back a few years," he says. "Russia was not enjoying its best days. Everything was in decline: stability, the state, the economy. Almost nothing was possible. Every day then I told everyone here one thing: we are dancers, singers, musicians — performers. This is what counts. 'Perform, sing, dance. Then dance, sing, perform. Then sing, dance, perform. Then you will have people come to see you, to sponsor you, to support you.'"

With his lofty political patrons and monied foreign devotees, Gergiev needn't worry. Not only is he Russia's most captivating cultural icon, he is also a proven hard currency earner. There seems no end to Gergiev's ascent. The only question is whether his dancers and singers and players can keep pace with him.