As part of his new government, Lenin appointed Anatoly Lunacharsky - who once described himself as an intellectual among Bolsheviks, and a Bolshevik among intelligentsia - as the people's commissar of public education, the man under whose authority fell the arts in the emerging Soviet State. The man seemed to have not only a belief in the arts in the life of Russia's people but a personal love of them. In 1918, the Mariinsky became the State Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet, or GATOB. At first, its repertory remained unchanged. The theater still mounted the standard Russian works, plus familiar operas by Verdi, Wagner, Gounod, Rossini and Saint-Saens. But to many party members, these were too conservative. Lunacharsky came to the defense of the theatres: "Only naiive people can discuss seriously that our great opera houses must change their repertoire. No revolutionary repertoire exists, and we cannot afford new productions." But although the repertory did not change fast enough to pleaze zealots, the number of performances was increasing and the old works were beginning to be rethought, re-staged and made to fit party ideals.In 1921, state subsidies were severely cut back. Both the GATOB and the Bolshoi were attacked again as being too bourgeois. By the next year, the situation had become so desperate that there were talks of closing the GATOB. This potential catastrophe was side stepped, but saving the theatres came at a high price: a renewed demand that the repertory be brought even more in line with socialistic aims and ideals. Yuri Temirkanov, Gergeiv's predecessor at the Kirov. Photo: Richard Haughton Courtesy The Philadelphia Orchestra. The text of operas was rewritten to conform to communist gospel. Glinka's A life for the Czar became Hammer and Sickle, or A life for the Country in 1925. There were transformations as well of Carmen (she became a Jewish communist in Poland), Lohengrin (who became an American socialist) and Tosca, which was recast as the Battle for the Commune... The early 20's were a difficult time at the GATOB. Many important singers went to the West, The financial position of the Theatre called its existence into question, and all those circumstances had seriously affected the company's discipline. Even with these problems, GATOB was able to mount new productions and the Russian Premieres of Prokofiev's The love for Three Oranges in 1926 and Alban Berg's Wozzeck in 1927 with their composers in attendance. But despite its promising beginnings and the initial adventurousness of its repertory, the GATOB was soon overshadowed by Moscow's monolithic Bolshoi Theatre, and also suffered the competition of two newly created Leningrad based institutions, the Maly Theatre and the Opera Studio (where the future Kirov artistic directors, Gergiev and Temirkanov cut their operatic teeth). By 1930, it had become mired in routine. It remained a stronger house for dance than for Opera, given the tradition of its Ballet school and the presence in the conducting staff of Evgeny Mravinsky. In 1935, in memory of the head of Leningrad's communist party murdered by Stalin, the GATOB was christened the Kirov Theatre. During World War II, and the prolonged German siege of Leningrad, activity in the Theatre came to a virtual standstill, and the company was evacuated to Perm until the end of the hostilities. After the war, the Kirov took up where it left off, but failed to recover its glory. This period saw a return to the Mariinsky's classical heritage. The theatre also addressed the modern foreign repertoire, mounting productions of Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes, and Ferenc Erkel's Hunyadi Laszly. Irina Bogacheva, Galina Kovaleva, Lyudmila Filatova, Boris Shtokolov and Vladimir Natov sang at the Mariinsky Theatre in those years. But in 1977, the party politicians realized that the Mariinsky had lost its prime position among the worlds' opera theatres and thought something must be done about it, They turned to Yuri Temirkanov, then Music Director of the Leningrad Symphony, to reset the Theatre's course. Temirkanov was at first put off by the difficulty of the task but was finally convinced and accepted the position of Artistic Director of the Kirov, which he held until 1988. After staging such twentieth century operas as Sergei Prokofiev's War and Peace, and Rodion Schedrin's Dead Souls, Temirkanov mounted, not only as musical director but also as stage director, his own versions of Eugene Oneguin and The Queen of Spades. This period saw the regeneration of the theatre and the appearance of a new generation of modern artists. The election of a new principal conductor in the late 1980's ushered a whole new era in the history of the Mariinsky opera. Valery Gergiev injected fresh life into the company and opened new artistic horizons.