Famous Russian musician and former Bolshoi Theatre Director, Boris Pokrovsky, is celebrating a jubilee year. To give himself a present he has staged a new opera – “Clandestine Marriage” – in his Chamber Opera House.&

He says working with actors is not easy. And as for his style, it is pretty tough, but actors do not get offended. Maestro Pokrovsky has staged about 200 performances featuring most top Soviet opera stars: Galina Vishnevskaya, Ivan Kozlov, Tamara Sinyavskaya.

When a boy, young Pokrovsky’s dream was to be a tram-driver. But instead he came to steer musical life at the Bolshoi Theatre.

“Once there were sailors at a performance, and they were making so much noise that you couldn’t hear a thing!” recalls Mr Pokrovsy. “But when a ballerina took the stage, they fell silent, struck by her beauty!”

In the 1960s he founded his own theatre – The Moscow Chamber Opera House – a laboratory where modern opera music was staged.

His friend and colleague Evgeny Svetlanov, a famous conductor, suggests he should be in the Guinness Book of Records “for his diligence, talent and loyalty to art. ”

And Mr Pokrovsky shares his dream: “If only I could ban everything except theatre for three days and make everybody listen to the opera! Then mankind would realize what it was born for!”