Some Swans in Odessa

            (This is a response to the previous post by John)

Visiting the Odessa Opera House was a total surprise for me. First of all, I was astonished because it was John’s idea and he had never before expressed the slightest interest in opera or ballet. Actually I remember hearing him say something in the past about disliking opera but the lack of evidence doesn’t allow me to prove this.

Secondly, I have never seen the Kharkov Opera theatre as crowded as I saw Odessa’s Opera House, especially during the summer months which are considered to be the “dead season” to all those who perform at, help run or attend the theatre. Surprisingly, there was no scene with celebrities from abroad, no scandalous director, and no innovations. It was a strict classic hackneyed performance of Tchaikovsky’s ballet. I would never have expected tickets to be completely sold out. It was absolutely fascinating to see all those people trying to get access to the ticket box after it was closed or looking for some different ways to get into the theatre.

The performance itself could have been better considering the agitation that was displayed outside. This could be mainly regarded to the orchestra, which wasn’t massive enough to drown the sound of dancing. It was passable during single dances and even pas de trois, but not during the corps de ballet collective dances. Some giggling went through the audience when we were hearing the heavy sound of “little swans” feet. In my opinion they decided to cut down on expenses and sent  most of the musicians on vacation. This was very smart, because people go to ballet not to listen but mainly to see, so who cares about music and aesthetics of performance?

Anyway, the Opera House has its special “artistic” atmosphere, with its luxurious décor and interior, which at once reminded me of all the world’s best-looking theaters such as La Scala, Prague, Dresden, Vienna Opera and the Metropolitan Opera. But of course I have only seen them in movies and pictures.

Swan Lake in Odessa Opera House, 2011, July, 6th

Defining the style of the Opera House, John somehow came up with Italian baroque, but I’ve read only about its referring to Viennese baroque (all building) and French rococo (audience hall interior).

Some more interior photos. Odessa Opera House, 2011, July, 6th

                                 

It’s a pity for me, but I would never think about a style mixture like this looking at Kharkov Opera and Ballet Theatre, which gained a folk title of “Fantômas castle”, because of its horrendous and somehow hilarious, heavy, soviet-type architecture. To add fuel to the fire, the project of this building, made by Soviet architerctor Mirgorodskiy was planned for both Kiev and Kharkov but was rejected by the first one.

Posted by Helen

Odessa, Z to A, --- The Odessa Opera and Ballet Theater

               The most recent time I returned from America it seemed to me that I take pleasure in torturing myself. I had arrived in Kiev but I did not even allow myself the luxury of spending a night in a hotel. I crashed briefly at a hostel so I could shower and pull myself together before hoping on the night train to Kharkiv. The next day I dropped off my luggage in my apartment and then I got on another overnight train to Odessa. Somehow during this time I did meet someone at the hostel that said he (Let us call this person Mr. C.) was planning on going to Odessa. I explained how I was also going there but that my journey would be in a roundabout way. I suggested he look me up when he arrived. This fellowship ended up being very useful to me during the Odessa trip. I really like crashing at (the lowly) hostels when I travel alone because it is so easy to make friends. If I do this in a city that I’m familiar with, afterward I’m sure to share my experience. I have taken my new friends out to some of my favorite restaurants/clubs numerous times. Once, my brothers and I reserved a 4 bed compartment for the three of us to travel to Kiev. One of my friends told me that he needed to go to Kiev but the train was sold out. After speaking to my brothers we agreed to sell the extra ticket to my friend. He was lucky that he had taken the time to make friends in low places.

            Let me return to Odessa…. While I had been there many times, I had only seen the Opera House (http://www.opera-ballet.tm.odessa.ua ) from the outside. The facade is an Italian Baroque style. I think of its location as being at one end of the “tourist strip” of Deribasovskaya Street. (The opposite end would be near the City Garden.)The “pedestrian only” part is a little father west. This area is open to cars and seems to attract bridal limos whose occupants are looking for a photo opportunity.

I did meet up with Mr. C in Odessa. A few of us met for drinks at a small place in Arcadia (more on the Acadia later). I expressed an interest in going to the Opera House to see a performance. It was our understanding that the season’s final show was coming up. One of Mr. C’s friends that had accompanied him told us that he had a lot of contacts at the Opera House and he could help us get tickets. Later in the week we met him there. There was a bit of a crowd that queued up on that rainy night to see a performance of Swan Lake. We found out that the tickets were sold out. However, our new friend told us that his associate would let us in the door if we paid a small bribe. After doing so we were then informed that another comrade would allow us to enter a box for another little bribe.

            We were escorted into a small extremely dim room and were given seats. I couldn’t see anything because it was pitch dark. I actually felt like standing so I just leaned against the wall. After awhile my night vision noticed that there were about 10 other people in the room. In a little while the usher let another couple in. They were given the last two chairs. However, since I wasn’t sitting in my seat it was given to a young woman. That was the last seat in the booth. Somehow even though I decided to stand, now I seemed to desire that seat since I could no longer have it. When the house lights were turned up a little we could see much more of the Opera and Ballet Theater. The inside was quite ornate. It had a Louis XVI design with gilded figures. I recently watched the movie Dangerous Liaisons and I felt that the Odessa Opera House could have easily been used for the theater scenes for that film which was set in 18^th century France. The ballet was quite good (of course I’m not a ballet aficionado so take my recommendation with a grain of salt) and I remembered that the last ballet I saw was in fact The Nutcracker (during a Holiday Season). That was another one that was scored by Tchaikovsky.

            The Odessa Opera House was rebuilt in 1887 after the original was destroyed by fire in 1873. It is similar in design to Dresden’s Semperoper. While that theater was completely destroyed during WWII; the Odessa Opera house had only one corner damaged. It seats 1,636 and has 24 exits to prevent the loss of life in case of a fire. Strangely enough, the night I was there it appeared to me that everyone entered and exited thru the main entrance; even those sans tickets. I would like to return to see another performance. Maybe next time I will be proactive enough to buy tickets in advance.

             

              Posted by John

Odessa railway station or rather Jumping all over the map.

It makes some sense that foreigners choose air travel because train stations in Ukraine have either no inscriptions in English or very few of them, except some transliterations which are of no help. This causes some difficulties in getting around the place. It might be better to learn a couple of significant words before going there, such as «поезд» (poyezd) for train, «касса» (cassa) for ticket window, «платформа» (platforma) for track,«метро» (metro) for subway. The last one seems to be the first word learnt by most foreigners coming to Kharkov, but it’s quite useless in Odessa because there is no subway. The absence of it is caused by a ramified system of catacombs under the city (approximately 4000 kilometers) which could be used only if you want to get lost or steal partisan artifacts circa 1945, do some monkey business as a smuggler, or kidnapper etc. If you get really bored you may go there on an excursion, but I will postpone talking about the catacombs for a while so that not to run ahead of John’s “Z to A” order.

I’m not aware of the “beautiful” architecture of Odessa’s train station since I never went inside of it or maybe I did walk in and I didn’t notice anything which is worse, but it doesn’t look impressive for me even from the outside. As many others in Ukraine it was built after its destruction during the WW II. I suppose all of those belong to the so called Stalin Empire style, or simply empire style dominating the whole city. I don’t count the Opera House (or Opera Theatre) building with its luxurious baroque.

Of course, among all of the train stations I have seen in Ukraine I prefer Kharkov’s, but I’m not afraid of being subjective.

The one in Kiev could be competitive if didn’t have a huge steel-and-glass hi-tech appendix which rose on the body of the old building and looks like a parody of the airport of Antalya in Turkey (in accordance with Google images there is the same “palm tree” disaster at the railway in Madrid and maybe at many others which I haven’t seen):

  

                Kiev, modern part of train station building

                                    Antalya, Turkey Airport

Getting back to Odessa’s train station, there is one unpleasant thing about it and all the city streets in general. There are a lot of beggars, mainly gypsies, who are so bothersome that they may even be worse than the taxi drivers who try to catch you just after you get off your train.

I should add something to what John said about the word “вокзал”which itself doesn’t mean “train station”, you may come across it looking at bus stations, sea ports. But if you search in Google, you will find a challenging inscription, «железнодорожный вокзал» (zheleznodorozhnyj vokzal), its abbreviation ЖД вокзал or ж/д you have to be sure that it is about a railway station. It just crossed my mind that I would likely pay a couple of dollars to a foreigner who could pronounce this expression correctly without using an abbreviation.

Posted by Helen