Bolshoi cancels tour, Otello debut amid financial concerns

With arts groups everywhere suffering amid the global financial downturn, Russia's famed Bolshoi has decided to take drastic action with a significant programming cut.

Alexei Iksanov, general director of the Bolshoi Theatre, told Russia's Novye Izvestia daily that the company is cancelling a planned tour to Mexico as well as the spring premiere of a new production of Giuseppe Verdi's opera Otello.

According to Iksanov, the two programming elements amount to 30 per cent of the company's budget.

"The Bolshoi must make economies. We need to understand this as something inevitable, without hysteria or panic," he told the paper, according to Agence France-Presse.

"The government is discussing a new budget due to the fall in oil prices and the devaluation of the ruble. It would be naive to believe that culture will be financed as before."

The new Otello, commissioned from French director Arnaud Bernard, is an expensive production that carries a significant cost, Iksanov said.

"In order to properly mount that production, we would have had to cancel at least two other productions," he acknowledged.

The company's world-renowned ballet and opera stars have already been without a performance venue for several years because of the extensive restoration of the historic Bolshoi Theatre proceeding in Moscow. The completion date for the renovation has been repeatedly pushed back for a variety of reasons, with the most recent reopening estimate set for 2011.

In the meantime, the company has been staging some performances at another venue in Moscow and sending its troupes on tours around the globe.