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By Olga Fyodorova
The year 1954. The office of Lithuania’s Opera and Ballet Theater in Vilnius…
“Algis, today I was surprised to find out that almost all our lead singers
want to work with you, and only you. They say you are a great pianist,
you know all the operas by heart and feel each singer like no one else
has ever done before. Which makes me very happy to have such a great young
player around, but still you will have to choose whom exactly you are going
to play with. Just think about it and let me know…”
“Do I have to decide right now?”
“Let’s do it tomorrow. I have to go now… We have a big problem, you know.
Our chief conductor has just been rushed to hospital, which means that
we have no one to man the pulpit tonight. I’ll try to find someone else
but I’m not sure it’ll work out. Because one of our conductors is now on
the road and the other lives out of town with no phone to reach him…”
“And what about me?..”
“You? But you are a pianist, not a conductor, aren’t you?!”
“You just said that I know all our operas by heart and the singers too.
Back in the conservatory I occasionally conducted our student orchestra
and have always dreamed of someday becoming a conductor. Maybe it’s just
the lucky chance people often spend a whole lifetime waiting for! Try me!”
“Well, let’s give it a try then…”
Algis Zurajtis started raising eyebrows for his phenomenal musical ear
and memory when he was still a kid. And still, seeing his longtime
dream of being a performing pianist or operatic conductor temporarily dashed
by the whim of the ever-changing life, Algis landed himself a solo performer’s
job at an opera theater and it was sheer luck that his chance debut as
a conductor inspired in him such high hopes for a glorious future…
Two years after his successful stand in, Algis Zurajtis entered the conductors’
department of the Moscow Conservatory where he quickly established his
bona fides and soon took up the reins of the Moscow Radio Orchestra. Just
a year after graduation, he was given a ballet conductor’s job at the Bolshoi
Theater. Rodion Shchedrin’s Humpback Horse starring the great Maya Plisetskaya
was the first ballet he conducted at the country’s premier music theater…
The Bolshoi’s dancers just loved working with Zurajtis who knew all the
ballets by heart, which means that his eyes were on the stage and not the
score before him. He always made sure that the orchestral chords coincided
with the moment a dancer touched the floor coming off a jump. Knowing
the way a ballerina felt at any particular moment, he always maintained
the right tempo having the corps de ballet moving with clockwork synchronicity.
With the Bolshoi ballet, Algis Zurajtis traveled far and wide steering
the orchestra through such all-time masterpieces as Gizelle, The Swan Lake,
Romeo and Juliet. He now had his sights on another big dream, though, –
the opera.
His first try was The Masked Ball by Giuseppe Verdi. He staged it in collaboration
with the great stage designer Nikolai Benois and a celestial lineup of
dancers. It was clear long before the premiere that this one was
going to bring the house down…
It was then and there that Algis professionally met his wife-to-be Yelena
Obraztsova. They had met before but now it was the first time they could
appreciate each other as stage partners. After a few weeks of working
together, Algis knew he had finally found his love… Despite the many obstacles
barring their way to happiness, the two decided to tie the knot. Who knows,
maybe some of their shared admissions of love later found their way into
their joint production of Massenet’s opera Werther. Vladimir Bogachev sang
the part of the young poet, Yelena Obraztsova was Charlotte and Algis Zurajtis
conducted the orchestra…
The Bolshoi Opera’s big names were now scrambling to work with Zurajtis
even though they knew full well how nitpicking he was. An expert in everything
he was, he expected the same exactness from everybody else. He could
easily go berserk if someone was not being attentive enough or less passionate
about what was going on. Small wonder that he was looking for people who
matched his red-hot inspiration. For the premiere of Tchaikovsky’s
opera Mazepa, Jurajtis brought together a closely-knit team of like-minded
professionals resulting in an absolutely spectacular production…
After the resounding success of Juraitis’ second directorial effort, many
expected him to take up the vacated job of the Bolshoi’s chief conductor,
but the much-coveted position eventually landed in another’s hands. That
was the end of Algis’ operatic endeavor and the following twelve years
he was back to conducting the Bolshoi’s tried and true evergreens.
Despite the fact that Algis Zurajtis studied with the very best teachers
around, his conducting manner was never elegant, even worse, it had some
nervous touch to it. Sometimes it seemed that the musicians would find
it hard to follow his hands, and still they played with amazing synchronicity
led by his iron will…
Algis Zurajtis was a strong man – both physically and spiritually. A lifetime
athlete, he was an avowed vegetarian, never smoked and practiced yoga.
His very looks betrayed this ascetic side of his nature – he was always
in black - wearing a light black sweater in the morning, jet-black
tails in the evening and an elegant black overcoat out in the street.
He was polite but he rarely smiled. Known as a decent man, he once sallied
his otherwise impeccable reputation reporting one of his colleagues to
the KGB. He thought he was doing it for the sake of justice and purity
of the arts, that’s why he never recanted. Moreover, he kept wondering
why many Moscow intellectuals boycotted him…
Algis Zurajtis died just before his 70th birthday but he left behind a
wealth of recordings made for the radio and on vinyl…
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