Moscow, Russia — Activities
Moscow Culture
Moscow's cultural history spans all the arts, but none is quite so distinctive as the style of icon painting developed in the centuries running up to the reign of Peter the Great. The most famous icon painter of the Russian Orthodox Church, Andrey Rublyov, had his workshop and was buried in the Spaso-Andronikovsky Monastyr (Monastery of the Saviour and Andronicus) in the eastern suburbs of the city. The 19th century brought painters such as Ilia Repin whose Realist works portrayed peasants and other ordinary people. The excitement of the Constructivists' avant-garde work, in the early 20th century, was dampened by Stalin's regime. For decades, Socialist Realism was the only publicly produced art. Today, Moscow is undergoing an artistic renaissance but the stylised work of the Soviet era is lviewed with nostalgia. Many old Soviet propaganda posters are available as modern reproductions.
The former Soviet Union took great pride in its cultural institutions, some of which rank amongst the finest in the world. Perhaps the most famous are the Bolshoi Ballet and Opera Company and the Moscow Circus. Advance tickets can be quite cheap but those purchased from ticket touts on the evening of the performance are usually expensive. Concert and theater tickets can be purchased at the venues, at large hotels or more cheaply from kiosks on almost every main street. Alternatively, book online at Top Bilet (tel: (495) 228 0987; www.topbilet.ru). Moscow Out (www.moscowout.ru) is an excellent source of listings and information on cultural events in the capital.
Music: The Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, Bolshaya Nikitskaya ulitsa 13/6 (tel: (495) 629 9401; www.mosconsv.ru), is Russia's largest and most famous music school, as well being as the venue for major concerts - premieres of works by Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitry Shoshtakovich took place here and Pyotr Tchaikovsky taught at the Conservatory but died before public concerts started in 1898. One of the students who he commended for his thesis project was none other than Sergei Rachmaninoff. Concerts take place in both the Great and Small Halls.
The Tchaikovsky Concert Hall, Triumphalaya ploshchad 4/31 (tel: (495) 299 0378), hosts a full program of symphony and chamber concerts, as well as special festivals and performances of Russian national dance and organ and choral music. The gifted musicians of the Russian National Orchestra (tel: (495) 504 0781; www.rno.ru) play here when they are not touring the Russian Federation or the world.
Theater: Moscow's pre-eminent theater company is the MKHAT imeni Chekhova (Moscow Art Theater, named after Chekhov), Kamergersky pereulok 3 (tel: (495) 629 8760; htpp://art.theater.ru), founded in 1898. It revolutionised drama in Europe, staging plays by Anton Chekhov and providing a venue for the method-acting techniques of Konstantin Stanislavsky. Now more classically mainstream than avant-garde, the theater continues its fine tradition of method acting.
The Maly Teatr (Small Theater), Teatralnaya ploshchad 1/6 (tel: (495) 623 2621; www.maly.ru), has a history of staging plays of political and social satire, most notably during the 19th century. Some of Russia's most famous playwrights, including Nikolai Gogol, staged their first plays here. There are performances daily at 1900, but most plays are performed in the original Russian.
The Taganka Drama and Comedy Theater, Zemlyanoy val 76/12 (tel: (495) 915 1217/1155; www.taganka.org), has an excellent reputation, earned through its staging of modern classics such as Doctor Zhivago and The Master and Margarita. The Satirikon Theater (tel: (495) 218 2030; www.satirikon.ru) at Sheremetyevskaya ulitsa 8 stages many critically acclaimed productions, both contemporary and classical.
Transforming circus into high art, the famous Great Moscow Circus (tel: (495) 930 0300; www.circ.ru) at prospekt Vernadskogo 7, features spectacular performers defying death at every turn.
Dance: The Bolshoi Ballet and Opera Company, perhaps the most renowned in the world, performs at the Bolshoi Theater, Teatralnaya ploshchad 1 (tel: (495) 292 9270; www.bolshoi.ru), from September to June (performances are daily at 1900 with weekend matinees at noon). The company was formed in 1773 and it took up residence in the Bolshoi Theater in 1824. Its international reputation was consolidated by theater director Yuri Grigorovich, who led the company on a series of ground-breaking world tours between 1964 and 1995. The theater itself is a striking neo-classical building, renowned for its size and the quality of the acoustics. However, the theater is undergoing major renovations and will not be open until the end of 2009. In the meantime, the New Stage at the Bolshoi hosts classic productions, but in less sumptuous surroundings.
Film: Russian film is enjoying something of a renaissance thanks to generous state and private funding. Domestic film-makers are getting a chance to screen their own creations rather than being muscled out by Hollywood blockbusters and there is some fine work being produced. Anything by Aleksei Balabanov, director of the highly rated Brat series of films, is worth watching, as are the films of Andrei Zvyagintsev, including the astonishing The Return.
Occasionally, cinemas screen such seminal works of Russian cinema as Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin and Ivan the Terrible and Vsevolod Pudovkin's Mother. Eisenstein used the Kolisei cinema (now the Sovremennik Theater) for his Proletcult worker's theater.
More mainstream films that are worth hunting down for their contemporary Moscow settings include the fantasy romps Night Watch and Day Watch. In July, look out for screenings associated with the International Moscow Film Festival (www.moscowfilmfestival.ru/eng). If you need a Hollywood fix in English, head to the American Cinema (tel: (495) 941 8747) at the Radisson Slavyanskaya or the Dome Theater (tel: (495) 931 900; www.domecinema.ru) at the Renaissance Moscow Hotel.
Literary Notes: Moscow has been home to many important writers and has often been the setting for their works. The houses where playwright Anton Chekhov and novelists Leo Tolstoy (Leo Tolstoy ulitsa) and Maxim Gorky (Malaya Nikitskaya ulitsa) spent part of their lives, are all open to the public. Philosopher, moral thinker, nobleman, writer of realism and intellectual giant, Tolstoy (1828-1910) was born at Yasnaya Polyana near Tula, south of Moscow. The Russian capital features in many of his works, most notably in War and Peace (1865-69), considered one of the greatest novels ever written, which features the burning of Moscow during the Napoleonic wars.
Chekhov's play, The Seagull (1896), premiered at the Moscow Arts Theater in 1898. Chekhov and the novelist/playwright Nikolai Gogol, were both buried in Novodevichy Cemetery, in the southwest of the city (see Key Attractions). Fyodor Dostoevsky was born and spent his early years in Moscow, returning to give a stirring speech along side Ivan Turgenev at the unveiling of the monument to Alexander Pushkin in 1880, the first public recognition of Russian national literature. Pushkin is still regarded as the father of Russian literature - his best-know works are Eugene Onegin (1825) and Boris Godunov (1824).
Boris Pasternak lived in the outskirts of Moscow (1939-60), among the artists and writers in Peredelinko. It was here that he wrote his sweeping romantic novel about the Russian Revolution, Doctor Zhivago (1957). Mikhail Bulgakov set parts of his novel, The Master and Margarita (written in the 1930s, first published posthumously in 1967), in the Central House of Writers restaurant, as well as at Patriarshiye Prudy (Patriarch's Ponds), where the novel begins.
Mikhail Lermontov, the poet and novelist, studied at Moscow University and lived just off present-day Novy Arbat. The house of Ivan Turgenev's mother, where he stayed while in Moscow, is also open to the public. More recently, Victor Pelevin, who penned The Clay Machine Gun (1996), has been compared to Martin Amis. Other leading authors of quality fiction are Boris Akunin and Vladimir Sorokin. New novelists who have recently emerged to critical acclaim include Vladimir Kozlov, Ilya Stogov, Mikhail Elizarov, co-authors Alexander Garos and Aleksei Evdokimov, and Oksana Robski, whose debut Casual exposed the lives of Moscow's new rich.
There is no shortage of works by Western novelists set during the Cold War - Moscow was a favorite setting for John Le Carré and there is also the eponymous Gorky Park (1981), written by Martin Cruz Smith.
Moscow Tours
Walking Tours
Private guides can be hired through the major hotels. There are always individuals in the Red Square/Kremlin area, who will offer to act as a guide for a fee - visitors should negotiate this before setting off. Capital Travel (tel: (495) 232 2442; www.capitaltours.ru) offers various Moscow tours, including three-hour tours of the Kremlin museums, cathedrals and the Patriarch's Palace.
Bus Tours
As well as walking tours of the Kremlin, Capital Travel (tel: (495) 232 2442; www.capitaltours.ru) offers bus tours of the famous Moscow sights, including the Kremlin, Tverskaya, Christ the Saviour Cathedral, Victory Park and the Bolshoi. Bus tours can also be readily arranged through hotels and incoming tour operators, including Astravel (tel: (495) 781 2700; www.astravel.ru).
Boat Tours
One of the more pleasant ways to see the city is to take a boat trip on the Moskva River. Boats run by the Capital Shipping Company (tel: (495) 225 6070; www.cck-ship.ru in Russian) leave half hourly from a number of landing points in the city center and the journey lasts up to 90 minutes, depending where you board. Good starting points are Kievskaya, near the Metro station, the Radisson Slavjanskya Hotel and the Borodinsky Bridge (the city's oldest, built in 1912). Tickets can be booked through hotels or from the boat company. For longer river cruises, including the trip to St Petersburg, contact Visit Russia (tel: (495) 626 0391; www.visitrussia.com).
