Delos Diary - The War Songs Tour III

Delos Insider

The continuing saga of Dmitri Hvorostovsky’s War Song Tour of Russian "Hero Cities" is taking on legendary proportions as you will see as you read about the open-air concert which took place on June 3… the Volgograd Concert.
Formerly known as Stalingrad, this heroic city, and the battle that took place there, marked the turning point of World War II when Russia, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives, repelled the Nazi invasion.
Constantine Orbelian's Chapter III narrative continues on the same high level as Chapters I and II — Tula and Smolensk. His account of the immense public response to this tour is engrossing. We beg you to pay particular attention to the quotes from the Governor and Mayor of Volgograd, the region and the city. Their comments underline and clarify Dmitri Hvorostovsky's overriding decision to sing songs glorifying Russia as Motherland, for transcending the philosophies of the former Soviet Union and the political system it sponsored.
Pride in Russia, the Motherland, and the sacrifices Russians made to preserve its integrity, is the ultimate aim of this ongoing songfest now approaching its halfway mark.
Critical and public response to this Constantine Orbelian journal of the "Hero Cities" tour have been numerous and enthusiastic. We at Delos have every intention of following up the completion of the tour narrative on the web with a brochure or book which will include the story of the entire experience illustrated with photos to bring to life even more vividly the events Orbelian describes so well in his text.

VE Tour of the Hero Cities, Concert 3: Volgograd (Stalingrad)

We all converged at the VIP Lounge at Domodedovo (Moscow's newest airport) at 10 a.m. on June 1st, 2005. Everyone was in a great mood, since at that hour there was no traffic going out of the city to ruffle any feathers…

We had a leisurely coffee at the bar in the lounge and boarded our charter plane to Volgograd. We had two charter planes with us: one for us, the orchestra and tech personnel, and the other for the choir, along with other ground staff who were needed to pull off a production the likes of which Volgograd has never seen.

This is the first of our outdoor concerts. The second will be in St. Petersburg on June 12. There were two semi trucks enroute from Moscow for three days, bringing a huge outdoor stage that could fit 275 musicians on it; and of course, all of the sound equipment needed for the outdoor event!

It takes three days to mount the stage and two days to hang all of the lights, sound equipment and plasma screens. The concert was to take place on the largest square in the city, "The Square of Fallen Soldiers," where there is a large monument and eternal flame dedicated to those who lost their lives defending their city.

As soon as the plane arrived the doors were opened and we all descended the stairs. The Vice Governor of the Volgograd region met us with TV cameras, along with the Minister of Culture of the region and local dignitaries. We were then whisked off to the VIP area of the airport where a Cossack Choir was waiting for us. As soon as we got out of the cars, they offered us each a glass of vodka and bread (the local welcome for guests) and started singing and dancing in their own inimitable style, pulling Dmitri into a dance with one of the lovely young girls while all of us watched them sing and dance their hearts out! What a welcome!

A police escort led us the entire way from the airport to the center of the city. They had closed off all of the streets, and no traffic was allowed until we had passed. We felt like a Presidential motorcade! We pulled up at the Volgograd Hotel in the center of the city in record time. It was 2 p.m.

We all converged at 6 p.m. for a press conference at the City Hall of Volgograd, where the conference room was packed with journalists and TV cameras. All of the normal questions were asked, and Dmitri answered to their satisfaction. In such interviews, if a question emphasizes Dmitri's accomplishments, I will often jump in and say about Dmitri what he wouldn't want to say about himself.

After the press conference we were taken to the Panorama Museum, which is dedicated to the Battle of Stalingrad. After Hitler's lack of success in breaking through the Russian defenses of Moscow and Leningrad he had selected Stalingrad as the city to destroy, largely because it bore Stalin's name. The destruction and occupation of that particular city was planned as the worst humiliation imaginable for Stalin and his position in Russia, and therefore as a blow to Russian morale. Indeed the Battle of Stalingrad has been called one of the bloodiest battles in human history. But is has also been called one of the greatest come-backs in military history. It began in August of 1942 and ended in February of 1943, and is considered to be the turning point in WWII. From the first attack, in which 1,000 German planes dropped incendiary bombs on a city where many structures were made of wood, through subsequent attacks that continued to kill thousands of civilians and reduce the city to a "landscape of rubble," both soliders and civilians stubbornly defended their city through incredibly fierce and close street fighting. The Battle continued until early February of 1943, when the Russians finally captured the remaining German troops in Stalingrad.

The Museum is located next door to the only structure left standing in the city after the final battle in 1943. This building is preserved as-is: a reminder of what the city was like at that time. Seeing this building, one is transported into another time… a time of enormous grief, destruction and death.

The Stalingrad Panorama Museum is one of the most moving monuments to a people and a city that I have ever seen. The circular panorama is a painting of one day’s battle — the battle of January 26th 1943. The panorama is 120 meters long and 14 meters high. One is left speechless by this amazing sight. The director of the museum gave us an absorbing account of what happened that fateful day in January.

We then traveled with Police escort to the Mamayev Kurgan Monument. At the top of the hill, which is said to have changed hands eight times during the Battle of Stalingrad, there is a 100-meter-high statue of "Mother Russia" holding a sword. (That is twice the height of the Statue of Liberty). First of all, you have to walk up 300 stairs, and as you climb the stairs you see more and more of the statue. You then come to a flat space where there are a number of strikingly expressive statues depicting the suffering of the Russian soldiers and citizens in WW II. Then you come to a Memorial with an eternal flame, where soldiers are standing on each side. Etched on the walls of this round structure are the names of fallen soldiers who died in the battle of Stalingrad. There are some 200,000 names etched on these walls.

Both Dmitri and I put flowers at the Memorial and also at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

As you leave the Memorial you walk out to the statue of Mother Russia. As you walk up the hill to the statue, you are in awe of the strength and power of what you see. You then realize that it wasn’t in vain that Stalin asked the citizens of his country to fight for the Motherland.

Just as we came to the top of the hill and were standing directly under the statue there was a thunderstorm that broke upon us, and a deluge of mammoth proportions! We ran to some trees and stood under them. Believe it or not, tables were brought with refreshments and food for us from the Mayor of Volgograd's office! It was all surreal…. We were served vodka in soldier’s cups, along with black bread and smoked meat. Even this was symbolic; it was the ration of the Russian soldier during the war.

We all headed back to the hotel, exhausted both emotionally and physically.

The next morning, I woke to an overcast sky, and it looked as if it were going to rain, which it did all day. Our workers and tech people had the stage all set up: lights, plasma screens and microphones all ready for the evening’s performance. The rain finally stopped at 6 p.m. and everything dried out; and it seemed as if someone had just freshened the air especially for us and for all of the people coming to the event.

At 7:50 pm, Dmitri and I met in the lobby of the hotel and were escorted by the Chief of Police through a corridor of policemen on both sides, keeping the crowd from getting in our path to the stage. It is approximately a 700-foot walk from the entrance of the hotel to the stage. I can’t even begin to tell you what this felt like.

At 8 p.m. I walked onto the stage and looked out at the audience… I was totally overwhelmed. There was a sea of people all around me, and I couldn’t even see where the mass of people ended! We were told that there were 80,000 people in the square. I conducted the National Anthem, and then a well-known local Veteran of WW II, a Russian General, came out on stage and introduced Dmitri.

Every song was met with massive bouquets of flowers and cheers from the audience. The weather was perfect: not a cloud in the sky and only a full moon to lead us through the evening. At the end of the concert, Dmitri looked into the screaming, cheering crowd of people and said, "I’m proud to be a Russian."

He then sang Feodor Chaliapin’s favorite a capella folk song, "The night."

The concert had a tremendous effect on all of us. Afterwards we were taken from the stage in our car and driven back to the hotel, with all of the people applauding the entire way and screaming, "Bravo! Dmitri!" in unison, as we left the car and entered the hotel.

The Governor of the region and the Mayor of Volgograd held a reception for us at the hotel. First the Mayor thanked us for "giving the people something that they thought they had lost. There is no propaganda office of the Soviet Union to force people into an imposed sense of loyalty and patriotism. Russians have a great need to be proud of their country without the connotation of the Soviet Union and the political system; they need to be proud of what their people have done and achieved, and the identity of who they are. And this program, so carefully put together, gives us just that; exactly what we needed."

Then the Governor spoke of "the power of Dmitri’s voice; his noble, deep and unique interpretation of the songs that everyone knows … But as we go on listening to Dmitri sing them, we realize that we have never heard the songs performed like this before. We listen to familiar words with a new meaning; and it doesn’t seem that they were written 60 years ago, but that they were written today, and are as vital and important to us now as they were then. It is as if we are hearing them for the first time, and are experiencing the emotions that made these songs something that would compel an entire country to fight and defend their homeland. We are at once moved, touched and humbled by what this great man has done for us."

The song "Motherland" sums up what 80,000 people were feeling that evening:

Motherland,
I sing for your glory,
I believe in your wisdom;
All your fates, all your troubles
I share with you, my native land!
Believe in me, as I believe in you!

Off to Krasnoyarsk… Dmitri's home town.