Master and Margarita

Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel The Master and Margarita has been mastered by Russian musical theatre in many ways: there is a musical, an opera, and even a rock opera. The absence of a ballet in Russia was corrected by foreign authors. The libretto and choreography based on the cult text of Russian literature was composed by a foreigner, Edward Clug. However, he has long ceased to be a stranger in Russia.
A regular guest at St Petersburg’s Dance Open festival, Clug has presented his work in Moscow, staged productions in Novosibirsk, and created two ballets for the Bolshoi Theatre of Russia. His choreographic interpretation of Carmina Burana has been presented in Russian cinemas.
Clug first caught the attention of Russian audiences with one of his early works. St Petersburg dancers have often diluted classical galas with the graphics of the melancholic duet from the ballet Radio and Juliet to the music of the band Radiohead, even in the first decade of the 21^st century, when Klug’s career as a choreographer started. Trained in his native Romania, Clug joined the Slovene National Theatre Maribor as a dancer and was appointed the director of its ballet company in 2003. Under his leadership the Maribor Ballet has become a leading touring company for his works, appearing at prestigious festivals across Europe and beyond.
Clug has been invited to create productions for Nederlands Dans Theater, the Vienna State Ballet, the Royal Ballet of Flanders, the National Opera of Ukraine and has maintained ongoing collaborations with the Stuttgart Ballet and the Ballett Zürich. In Russia it was the Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet Theatre that first embraced his work, introducing Peer Gynt to its repertoire in 2017, followed by the one-act ballets Whisper (set to Chopin) and Radio and Juliet the following year.
In 2018 Clug made his Bolshoi Theatre debut with Stravinsky’s Petrouchka. Then he received a second invitation – and, in 2021, the Bolshoi Theatre premiered The Master and Margarita. Reflecting on the challenges of adapting such a monumental novel, Clug – who came of age in Communist Romania – remarked:
“Anyone of my generation or older, who experienced the system in which this novel was born, feel a personal connection to the story. Irony, and even self-irony, was often a means of survival. That’s something I’ve carried with me from my own experience – and something that binds me to Bulgakov’s world. But The Master and Margarita, like every great work of human genius, doesn’t belong to one nation alone. It belongs to the world. I am deeply honoured and proud to have been entrusted with the opportunity to bring it to the stage.” Olga Makarova