Homeland Gravity: The Local, the National and the Global

Abstract

In 1960, the world of classic music was witnessing a very strong inter-galactic interaction between the two famous theaters: La Scala and Bolshoi were signing a previously unimaginable pact on the perennial exchange of opera singers and ballet dancers. As a result, a new star generation of Soviet singers and Italian dancers was trained in the herein established inter-galactic stellar nursery throughout the 1960–1980s (Schwartz, 1983). One of them was Maria Bieșu. Originally from a small Moldavian village, Bieșu had started her vocal career in the republic of Moldova before she was selected for the two-year internship in La Scala in 1965 (Vdovina, 1984). It was the turning point in her career, which began escalating upon her repatriation in 1967 and immediate promotion to lead dramatic soprano at Bolshoi. Nostalgic for Italy and feeling sad about the inability to live there, Bieșu was, nevertheless, happy with her Soviet career, rejecting many emigration offers from the West (ibid; Rusakova, 2012). Although her stardom was decades before the era of global elite migrations, she could have indeed become a migrant, seeking political asylum and joining the émigré dissent, if she had wished so. As a star of the Bolshoi, she frequently participated in its tours to Europe and America throughout the 1970–80s, yet always returning to Moscow without a moment of hesitation. In one of her post-Soviet interviews to the press, she noted that she would have never left the Soviet Union for any other country (ibid). As she further explained, the reason for her patriotism had been not her fear of the KGB but the rich symbolism of the Bolshoi, embodying her grand social mobility from peasant to national opera supergiant: “My homeland was always the Soviet Union”, she proudly concluded (ibid).