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The famous sea-green building which has been home to the Mariinsky Theater since 1860 is closing for a major renovation in Jan. 2007 and will reopen in May 2008, said the company’s artistic director Valery Gergiev at a news conference before the official opening of this year’s “The Stars of the White Nights” festival on Wednesday.
“In 2008, our summer festival will be back within these walls,” Gergiev said.
To prevent the world-renowned opera and ballet company from becoming homeless, the maestro, whose artistic talent and charisma are the heart of the theater’s fundraising campaigns, has attracted $20 million of sponsorship money to build a new concert hall on Ulitsa Pisareva, a short walk from the Mariinsky’s current home. |
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Sergei Karpukhin / Reuters
President Vladimir Putin speaks during an address on Wednesday. He offered financial incentives to boost falling birthrates. |
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MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin offered women cash to have more babies on Wednesday as he tackled a decline in population that is leaving swathes of the country deserted and threatening to strangle economic growth.
In his annual address to the nation, Putin said each year Russia’s population fell by about 700,000 — or about the same as the population of San Francisco.
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Six years and one day. It seems nothing compared to the long life of St. Petersburg pensioner David Ilych Altshuller, who celebrated his 90th birthday on May 1. Nothing — if you do not know what this period signifies for Altshuller: a commission in the Red Army and service throughout World War II, which ended 61 years ago this week. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin, speaking at the parade for the 61st Victory Day anniversary on Tuesday, said the Soviet defeat of the Nazis should be a warning to those seeking to revive fascism today.
Speaking against a backdrop of rising intolerance and racially motivated violence in Russia, Putin linked today’s extremism and xenophobia with the fascist menace of World War II. |
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A collection of forty erotic drawings by the Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein will be featured in an exclusive exhibition during the forthcoming 59th International Cannes Film Festival. |
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The St. Petersburg Times celebrated its 13th annivesary Thursday marking the day on May 11 1993 when its predecessor The St. Petersburg Press was launched as the city’s first post-Soviet independently owned English language newspaper.
“We are the city’s independent voice — we are not sponsored by political parties and the information in the newspaper is entirely factual — never our own opinion,” Tatyana Turikova, the newspaper’s publisher, said on Thursday. |
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PARIS — The United States is concerned about Russia’s use of its energy resources as a political weapon and China’s lack of transparency over military spending, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was quoted as saying.
In an opinion piece printed in France’s Le Figaro daily on Thursday, Rumsfeld said the U. |
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MOSCOW — The Central Bank has a money problem most people would die for: too many dollars.
“It’s sort of caught between a rock and a hard place,” said Peter Westin, chief economist at MDM Bank, referring to the delicate balance Russia faces in investing what this last week became the world’s fourth-largest foreign currency reserves. |
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Paris Club Talks
PARIS (Bloomberg) — Russia won an agreement from Paris Club creditor nations to begin talks on the reimbursement of its entire $22 billion debt ahead of schedule, the group said in a statement.
“A majority of creditors have already indicated their willingness to accept Russia’s proposal,” a statement posted on the group’s web site said Wednesday. |
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MOSCOW — Russia has banned imports of Georgia’s Borjomi and Nabeglavi mineral water, a little more than a month after clearing the country’s supermarket shelves of Georgian wines. |
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MOSCOW — The government is gearing up to sell off Sochi’s main airport as part of its plan to boost tourism at the country’s main Black Sea resort.
The sale became possible after President Vladimir Putin signed a May 3 decree that excluded the airport from a list of strategic state assets. |
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Steely Index
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia’s Gazprom and Novolipetsk Steel will be added to Morgan Stanley Capital International Inc.’s Emerging Markets Index, the index’s managers said in a statement released on Thursday. |
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More than sixty years have passed since the last of some 8.6 million Soviet soldiers, collectively known as “Ivan,” died to defeat Nazi Germany during the Great Patriotic War. (American and British forces suffered less than 250,000 deaths each.) Of the more than 30 million Soviet soldiers mobilized between 1939-1945, they made their ultimate sacrifice in order to avenge the invasion of Soviet territory and the racist war of extermination unleashed by Adolf Hitler’s Wehrmacht. |
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Some of us took an hour-long trip back to the future Wednesday afternoon. All one had to do was turn on the television and listen to President Vladimir Putin give his state-of-the-nation address to members of parliament and a slew of other officials. |
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 Anna Netrebko speaks out about being called a ‘traitor’ by the Russian media The fascinating Mariinsky Theater opera singer Anna Netrebko has decided to halt her application for Austrian citizenship following a wave of criticism in the Russian media questioning the diva’s patriotism and accusing the charming soprano of being a traitor. |
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The fifth annual KomMissiya festival illustrates the growing professionalism of Russian comic books.
MOSCOW — Now in its fifth year, the KomMissiya comics festival in Moscow has helped bring the once-obscure subculture of Russian comics into the mainstream. |
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The Rolling Stones will perform in St. Petersburg on June 13 as scheduled, the local concert’s promoter PMI said in a statement this week.
PMI confronted press reports that the local concert, which is the only Russian show on the band’s current tour, may be canceled due to an accident involving the Stones’ guitarist Keith Richards.
Richards, 62, underwent surgery on Monday to relieve pressure on his brain. The operation involved drilling a hole in his skull to drain blood from the brain, the New Zealand Herald reported on Thursday.
According to the paper, his spokeswoman, Fran Curtis, said Richards would be staying in Auckland as an outpatient and would be returning to the hospital for check-ups. |
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 Platforma, St. Petersburg’s leading art music club, is under new management and seeking to define itself on the city’s nightlife scene.
Platforma, the city’s leading art rock venue, which was at first run by a local businessman and a team of Moscow promoters/art directors, has recently become a totally locally-run club. |
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Behind the frontlines of the propaganda battle, some of the biggest setbacks in the lunar race were inflicted by the United States and the Soviet Union on themselves.
In “Space Race,” a wonderfully written account of the Cold War dash to the moon, BBC television producer and historian Deborah Cadbury unveils the public and private lives of Wernher von Braun and Sergei Korolyov, the two men most responsible for turning the dream of exploring space into rival state-supported programs. |
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TRIPOLI, Libya — Libya abruptly adjourned on Thursday the retrial of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor accused of deliberately infecting hundreds of children at a Libyan hospital with the virus that causes AIDS.
“The retrial case was postponed and will resume on June 13, with the defendants remaining in detention,” judge Mahmoud Chaouissa said. |
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NEW DELHI — Indian communist parties took early leads on Thursday as votes were counted after polls for five state assemblies, the biggest electoral test of the ruling Congress party since it came to power two years ago. |
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LONDON — Two of the suicide bombers behind last year’s deadly London transport attacks likely had contacts with Al-Qaeda, but British security services lacked resources to prevent the atrocity, an official report has concluded.
The report, by an influential parliamentary committee, pointed out that investigations were underway to establish the precise degree of any Al-Qaeda involvement in Britain’s worst terrorist attack, which killed 56 people. |
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Nightclub Fire Case
PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island (AP) — Though a former rock band tour manager is now behind bars for his role in a nightclub fire that killed 100 people, prosecutors say they are not finished with the criminal case stemming from a disaster that devastated the state three years ago. |
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CREMONA, Italy — CSC won the team time trial fifth stage of the Giro d’Italia from Piacenza to Cremona on Thursday.
CSC leader Bjarne Riis had said previously that nothing but first place would be satisfactory and that the time difference was not important. |
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ROME — Juventus have for many years been accused by their rivals of lining the pockets of referees to influence results, and the latest scandal to rock Italian football only adds weight to their suspicions. |
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FC Zenit St. Petersburg has dampened speculation that it is seeking a new foreign coach to replace Vlastimil Petrzela, the Czech coach who was fired last week, after press attachÎ Andrei Tanner told reporters om May 4 that he was sure that the next Zenit coach would not be Russian. |
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EINDHOVEN, Netherlands — Sevilla thrashed Middlesbrough 4-0 to win the UEFA Cup on Wednesday, kickstarting a Spanish fiesta in the Philips Stadium after the largest victory since the competition went to a one match final. |
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PHOENIX, Arizona — The Los Angeles Clippers pounded Phoenix 122-97 here to seize home court advantage from the Suns in their National Basketball Association Western Conference semi-final series.
Elton Brand and Chris Kaman dominated the paint as the Clippers leveled the best-of-seven series at one game each. |
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Issues Archive