General Director of the Bolshoi Theater Vladimir Urin in an interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta confirmed that he filmed performances by opponents of the war in Ukraine from the repertoire.
“There are two reasons for the change in the repertoire,” Urin said. — The first is purely legal. Some performances have simply run out of licenses, the renewal of which is not possible today <…> The second reason is completely different. When certain creators of performances spoke very definitely about the special operation. In this case, their names disappeared from the posters.”
In the spring of 2022, the Bolshoi Theater, without explanation, canceled performances of the ballet “Nureyev” directed by Kirill Serebrennikov, who opposed the invasion, and Serebrennikov’s name was removed from the description of the ballet on the theater’s website. A year later, the ballet was excluded from the repertoire, citing the law on “LGBT propaganda.”
Then, in March 2022, the Bolshoi Theater removed the ballet “Hero of Our Time,” staged to Serebrennikov’s libretto, from the show. Later the production was returned, but Serebrennikov’s name was removed from the list of authors. In May 2022, the Bolshoi Theater canceled the opera Don Pasquale directed by Timofey Kulyabin, who also condemned the war in Ukraine and left Russia.
The head of the Ministry of Culture Olga Lyubimova said that the names of theater figures who left Russia were removed from the posters at their own request or because of “offense among the audience.” In addition to the Bolshoi Theater, other institutions also did this. For example, the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater removed the name of director Kirill Serebrennikov from the description of the production “The Forest,” and the Novosibirsk Red Torch Theater decided not to show his performances by Kulyabin. The director's father was fired from his post as director of the Red Torch and was soon placed under house arrest on charges of embezzlement. Writer Boris Akunin, in turn, reported that his name was removed from the posters of Moscow theaters that show performances based on his plays.