Bolshoi business

This evening we benefited yet further from our Russian hosts’ extraordinary hospitality, being taken to a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker by the Bolshoi. I’d like to write ‘at the Bolshoi’, but the true Bolshoi theatre is still closed for restoration, so we went to the so-called ‘new Bolshoi’ next door, but the troupe and the performance was genuinely by the Bolshoi. And what a performance! It was also a perfect end to a week of hard work. Tomorrow, I’m hoping to visit the Kremlin before flying home to get a good night’s sleep. (Somebody depressed me slightly today by saying ‘we’re just getting old’, but I have found it curiously difficult to adjust to a time difference of just two hours.) By the way, our primary host, Russian Civic Forum President Yevgeniy Velekov, told me earlier today that in Pushkin’s time it never used to snow in Moscow until January. Snow, he assured me, is forecast for Christmas. I’ll have to make do with the snow in the Nutcracker!