(Comuna Rus, ROM) - Russia's famed Bolshoi Theatre finally lifted its curtain Friday after a six year closure for reconstruction that aimed to restore the former glory of its imperial splendour and artistic reputation.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told the audience that the Bolshoi was a "national treasure", before the curtain went up for a spectacular invitation-only gala including performances by top ballet and opera stars.
The reconstruction "was very serious work, it lasted six years, everyone felt this, the theatre, the company and everyone who loved it," Medvedev told an audience including the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
"This is our national treasure," he said.
In an opening item likely to cause controversy among traditionalists, the curtain parted to the sounds of chiming bells and flashing lights. Then performers in hard hats burst into a chorus from Glinka's opera "Ivan Susanin".
In its heyday in the Soviet Union, the Bolshoi staged performances by legends such as ballerinas Maya Plisetskaya and Galina Ulanova and the mythical male dancer Maris Liepa.
In a nod to the Bolshoi's traditions, the gala included a scene from the classic Soviet ballet "Spartacus" about the Roman slave, with star young dancer Ivan Vasiliev wowing the audience with his vertiginous leaps.
Silver-haired Russian opera star Dmitri Hvorostovsky sang a scene from Tchaikovsky's "Queen of Spades" in the gala, which was broadcast live on Russian television, as well as on YouTube.
The historic building hosted its last performance in July 2005 and was then closed for urgent restoration works, without which it risked simply disintegrating with three-quarters of the building deemed to be decaying.
The Bolshoi's entire opera and ballet troupe then moved to a newer but smaller theatre nearby with critics and even its own artists complaining that the cramped stage stifled its epic style.
"One of the main tasks of the reconstruction was bringing in new technology. Before 2005, we were lagging behind Europe by 100 years," Bolshoi director Anatoly Iksanov told the government Rossiiskaya Gazeta newspaper.
"But what we have now after the reconstruction has no rival," he said.
The 1,740 invitations were sent out only by the Kremlin administration and not by the theatre itself. The audience included ministers and top businessmen as well as the head of the Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill.
Crowds outside wistfully watched the guests walking down a red carpet in evening dress.
"I am hoping for a miracle. I've never been to the Bolshoi and it's my great dream to come here today on the opening night," one waiting woman, Olga Mots, 55, told AFP.
The restoration has been mired in controversy, overshooting the original budget over four times with an official cost of 21 billion rubles ($700 million) and missing the original reopening date of 2008.
But the results are spectacular and replicate as faithfully as possible how the theatre looked when it was rebuilt by Russian-Italian architect Albert Cavos in 1856 after a fire.
Restorers removed the Soviet coat of arms from the facade, replacing it with the double-headed eagle, the Tsarist symbol readopted by Russia. The Soviet hammer and sickle is also gone from the curtain.
Restorers spent three years replacing red silk wallpaper in the so-called Imperial Foyer, opened in the late 19th century to celebrate the coronation of the last tsar, Nicholas II.
Yet there are also huge changes in an effort to improve the acoustics. The number of seats has been reduced from the previous 2,155 and a new hall has been built underground for chamber concerts.
Artistic hopes are also high with the Bolshoi already staging innovative new productions of great operas and seminal works of modern dance on the second stage that has been its home for the last decade.
Most notably, US ballet star David Hallberg has joined the Bolshoi for the new season, the first time an American has become a member of the legendary company whose stars until now were all Russian or from ex-Soviet states.
