Barkhatov is a new name in the Russian opera directing scene. At 26, he has staged several productions at the Mariinsky Theater, and they are performed on the stages of various musical theaters around the country.

He has staged: "Diary of One who Vanished" by Janacek at the Helicon Opera, 2004; the opera dilogy "Music Director", "First Music then Words" by Antonio Salieri, and "Theater Director" by Mozart at the Rostov State musical theater, 2004. At the Mariinsky Theater he has staged the operas: ". Cheremushki" by Shostakovich,2006; "Jenufa" by Janacek, 2007; and "Benvenuto Cellini" by Berlioz, 2007.

- Tell me, please, why are you a director?

- Well, I never wanted to be an actor. For some reason I always though that they were dependent people, and they sometimes have to do things they don’t want to do.

- In what sense?

- In the ideological sense. If I am asked to do something that doesn’t match my artistic, spiritual or human requirements, then I won’t do it.

- Even if the motivation is lots of money?

- No. There is the concept of reputation. It is thought that you work for a name for a long time, and then the name works for you. But here the problem is not in the name, but in the authority. If you are asked to do dubious things – for example you get a call from a provincial youth theater and are invited to stage "Buratino" – that means you haven’t reached a high creative orbit.

- But this is not only a provincial story. The theater "School of the contemporary play" recently copied the play "Harmful advice" based on poetry by Grigory Oster from the wonderful production of the Petersburg Youth Theater from 20 years ago. And they even brought it here.

- I don’t think that that is correct practice – or when a director stages the same play in different theaters of a city, country or the world. This is dishonest, even if today the action takes place in a swimming pool, tomorrow on the moon and the day after tomorrow on a skating rink. If the producer agrees to repeat himself, he is acting dishonestly. Or you should admit to yourself: I tried, 15 times in a row the result was crap, but the 16^th time I finally got things right.

- The key word is honesty. But it’s a shame for the people you "practiced" with 15 times.

- Yes, but not everyone realizes this. Or it becomes a glass-bead game: how can I use the same material.

- A glass-bead game or jackstraw game?

- It depends on the scale.

- Do you also always have honest relations with the heads of theaters. And does the so-called "director’s theater" exist?

- It depends what you mean by this. It seems to me that almost no one deals with artistic issues in theaters. This has come from the Soviet system. If you look at many directors, you can see: to start with they were in the party committee, then they were the heads of a collective farm, or the head of a library, and then finally they moved to the humanities, and they were given a theater. Sometimes the link of the library is missing – they go from the collective farm straight into art. And that’s correct: the director of a theater is primarily meant to deal with economic tasks. Then he should have a very wise artistic director.

- What if the artistic director nominally exists, but is practically powerless, does absolutely nothing, and everything at the theater is in bad shape?

- Then you need to change the artistic director.

- But look at this: Anvar Libabov, the actor and artistic director of the Litsedei clown mime theater also works on a collective farm, because by profession he’s an animal technician.

- Anvar is an exception, I love and respect him. But I’m talking about something else. If the director of a collective farm does everything correctly, we wouldn’t have any complaints, and he would already be an Anvar, who is just as good at veterinarian work as theater work. He has a million ideas a second. As soon as you say something to him, he starts producing. He’s an absolutely recognized, talented theater figure.

- That’s a debatable issue – in the sense that many professional theater critics consider Libabov to be "just pure formula".

- Formula is also a talent.

- What methods do you think are legitimate and productive for a director to use to affect people? Is it permissible, say, to raise your voice?

- No, I never shout myself, and I don’t swear, and if during the rehearsal process I lose my temper and shout, it’s not out of any wish to offend or insult the artist.

- But there are always eccentric personalities in art. Can you shout at people or not?

- One great figure skater wrote a book saying that she had heard more insults and swearwords from her trainer at the age of 13 than she ever heard again in her life. But this is in sport, where it is thought that sportspeople needed to be treated harshly, and then they’ll get results.

- What about artists?

- I don’t know. If you had to swear like a trooper to make the production a success, then I probably would.

- Has anyone ever shouted at you?

- Yes.

- So that you couldn’t speak out of horror?

- Yes.

- What did you do?

- Nothing much. There are people who need to be shouted at, only then can you get something out of them. There are people who clam up and lose heart when you shout at them. It’s all quite individual.

- Aren’t words or tenderness better than rudeness and decibels?

- I’ve never even thought about treating artists like this. I started working at the Mariinsky Theater when I was 22, with respected soloists who had already sung at the Bavarian Opera and La Scala, and toured the world. Imagine that an artistic director or director invites you, and there’s a famous artist in the production, who has won titles and awards, and for some subjective reason he feels personally hostile towards you. He catches you in the corridor and says: "I don’t want to work with you. Yes, I’ve been cast in this role, I’m forced to go to your rehearsals, but remember: I hate you. I think you’re an upstart and a bastard, and I find it unpleasant to be in the corridor with you". In that situation, I must have very serious reasons to keep working, and convince this person that I am good.

- You have a contract. You can’t miss the production.

- But the artist can be changed.

- You can, but he will still follow you around the corridors and be angered by your presence in the theater.

- That’s normal.

- ?!

- I never had a production when someone didn’t walk around the theater hissing, and didn’t write denunciations and anonymous notes with words like "drug addicts", "faggots" and so on.

- Did you read these notes?

- No, I didn’t see them myself.

- Did well-wishers tell you?

- Yes, so that I knew what was going on.

- How do you deal with this?

- I find it very upsetting, and it’s extremely destructive for the working and creative process. It eats up energy and time, which could be spent on something more constructive. The main thing is to realize that people who were against me in certain theaters some time ago are simply zealots of their acting school. If we are to work with them again now, everything will be completely different, and we will be on excellent terms.

- You mean you can’t say: "I’ve staged productions at the Mariinsky and the Bolshoi, so love me!"

- It doesn’t happen that people love you for this. A graduate and a master have equal chances of receiving the trust of the troupe.

- Does this experience – mistrust, hostility, criticism, attacks – make you stronger?

- I’ve often joked about this with the artist Zinovy Margolin, with whom I work: what I missed out on from not serving in the army for health reasons, I made up for in the theater. I am generally an emotionally reserved person, I like to keep everything in, and sometimes I can’t even say some banal pleasantry to people close to me. Every time that I am told that what I do in the theater is crap, I say to myself the phrase of the angel from Ivan Vyrypaev’s play "July": "That’s not news". And I continue to do what I do. The main salvation is to know what my production will be like, and why. If I’ve thought everything out, and calculated each minute, everything else is not frightening. Everything will still be the way I want it.

- Have you ever wanted to abandon everything, get up and leave?

- Oh yes.

- How many times?

- Many times. But not because of people. I can put up with human aggression. But in general, sometimes I wonder: does anyone need this, or not? Perhaps directing, productions are just stupid? What’s the point on spending effort on some non-material, impalpable things? I sometimes feel like a strange person, who the neighbors think is "a complete retard", who’s devoted 15 years of his life to ufology, and catching green men. At night I look up at the sky through a telescope, and believe that aliens exist, because I’m personally acquainted with them and have had contact with them several times. But there is no proof, there are not even any photographs, and if there are, people say: sorry mate, that’s just photoshop.

- What reconciles you to reality? Red wine, "library days"

- I don’t remove myself from reality. I like it and I don’t want to move away from it. I want to be part of it, and even if there are boundaries between us, I want to erase them. These days, being antisocial is not comme il faut, and mauvais ton.

- How do you recover from a "dressing down" at the theater?

- I haven’t worked out how to do this yet. Sometimes I get the feeling that I have long exhausted my crisis, emergency and immune reserves – both artistic and physical. And I become terrified. It’s as if I’m eating myself up. If I put the first productions on out of "hungry ambition", now I realize that I’ve become a hostage. I don’t like rehearsals and don’t want to go to them. But in the process of staging a production, I only like four things: the moment that I am invited, the moment when I think everything up, then when I go to take my bow, and also when I put my card into the bank machine to receive my fee. Everything else is horrible and miserable… I’m joking, of course.