Dear Ladies and Gentleman,

It is a great pleasure for me to be here with you tonight.

For me this is a particular evening because this is about Art. And you all know how valued and appreciated Art is in Russia. Painting and music, sculpture and ballet, architecture and literature… Great number of masterpieces in every such field was created by Russians. I could start naming Aivazovskiy, Repin, Tchaikovskiy, Dyagilev, Stanislavkiy, Chekhov… but the list would be so long that many would fall asleep here, and you know these names for yourselves anyway.

An interesting and important thing, however, is that people in my country know that Art doesn’t have national boundaries. The names I mentioned as well as Shakespeare’s works are parts of the world heritage that we all share.

We appreciate the cultural wealth of other countries and other ages just as much as we love our own, and this exhibition today is weighty evidence to prove my words, and moreover not the only one – the first time it was in 1987 when the Moscow South-West Theatre (Театр на Юго-Западной) took part in the Edinburgh International Festival and performed Hamlet.

Let me take this opportunity to wish everyone a very pleasant evening.