Ukraine City at War’s Edge Clings to Arts

But there was one moment, as Sylva made her grand entrance in the matinee performance of Emmerich Kalman’s “Gypsy Princess” last weekend, that a solid blast caused the sturdy floors to shiver, ever so slightly, like God’s own timpani.

“In the theater, there is a rule that, even in war, performances should continue,” said Andrey Kornienko, the opera’s advertising director. “It is our duty to do our job, to support the people emotionally, to bring them art.”

In an unseasonably warm February, the snow has disappeared from the parks and rutted boulevards of Donetsk, but the fighting between the pro-Russian rebels who control the region and the Ukrainian military on the city’s outskirts — north, west and south — is never far from mind. Just Wednesday, at least five people died under an artillery barrage that also damaged a hospital, six schools and five kindergartens, local officials said.

People die almost daily from the shelling. Most of the streetlights are either out in the evenings or flicker in a kind of half-life, while whole stretches of apartment blocks are dark as tombs. Water pressure is unsteady.

Somehow, though, cultural and commercial life go on.

“Everybody pays too much attention to what is happening on the front lines,” said Vitaly Kobrik, deputy director of a youth sports complex that is struggling to stay open. “What is that? Just people murdering one another. No one pays enough attention to what is happening to the ordinary people who are trying to live here under such circumstances.”

The highly regarded opera continues a regular schedule of weekend performances, as does the neighboring dramatic theater. Performers at the popular Donetsk circus, having finished their New Year’s routines, are planning a new round of shows in February.

The planetarium is open every weekend. Many cinemas are operating. A handful of shopping malls have kept their doors open, though most of the shops in them are dark and stripped of merchandise.

At the Art Donbass exhibition center last week, a show of new works by the Union of Young Artists was unveiled with a series of speeches and a soulful rendition of “I Will Survive.”

“Song suits the situation very well,” Katerina Kalinichenko, the gallery’s director, remarked dryly.

The title of the show was “Hope, Belief and Love,” and the work was generally sunny and upbeat. Kseniya Shevchenko, the union’s chief, said only seven of its 10 members remained in Donetsk. “I try not to let the war influence my work,” she said. “It is so gray, so gloomy.”

At the Donetsk State Circus complex south of the city center, its circular facade and soaring windows caked with dirt, Juriy N. Kukuzenko, the director, walked forlornly around the empty center ring.

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In normal times, the circus could draw on a regional population of five million. But as town after town has emptied out ahead of the fighting, the audience has shrunk. The circus has not made a profit for a year. Traveling performers stopped coming to the region. For a while, in the fall, the grounds were used as a distribution point for humanitarian aid.

“In the end, we realized, we had enough of feeling afraid all the time,” Mr. Kukuzenko said.

In December, the circus organized a festival for young performers, mostly acrobatic and high-wire acts. More than 120 people participated, and the circus was packed. In January, there was a series of 10 performances, though with only about a third of the number of acts that normally were performed.

But the experience convinced the circus that, despite the war, people were hungry for entertainment, hungry to get out of their homes, hungry for a communal experience that was not about misery. More shows will commence as soon as the shelling subsides.

“We are absolutely ready to invite any troupes here,” he said. “We will be happy to invite any crazy artists who want to come to Donetsk.”

The Palace of Sports Dynamo sits beside a placid lake near the city center, across from the burned hulk of a floating cafe hit by shelling that also knocked out many of the gymnasium’s windows. The facility is famous in Ukraine for nurturing gymnastics stars like Liliya Podkopayeva, a 1996 Olympic gold medalist.

In a sprawling second-floor space, two dozen girls, ages 4 and up, ran through a series of warm-up exercises under the watchful eye of their trainers. In normal times, the facility has classes in archery, boxing, swimming, martial arts and other activities, but now only the young gymnasts show up.

“Some of us, we do not sleep all night because of the shelling, but we still come here,” said Liliya Pugachyova, who helped train Ms. Podkopayeva. “We keep the children in condition, but we also get their minds into a different place away from the war.”

Before the war, around 60 girls showed up for the daily training, said Mr. Kobrik, the deputy director. Now it is only 20 or so, depending on the level of shelling.

Trina Bugayova gently put her 6-year-old granddaughter, Asya, back into her winter clothes after a training session and prepared for the long journey home.

“When we hear the shelling is not so bad, we come here for the training,” she said. “You can’t just keep the child sitting at home.”

The girl also takes singing and chess lessons, war permitting. “These girls, they have all become much more grown-up in the last year,” Mr. Kobrik said. “Every war makes children more grown-up, especially civil war.”

Lydya Kachalova spent 30 years as a singer at the opera, and 25 more as stage manager. She celebrated her 80th birthday last month, and sits at her post beside the stage in a starched red blazer, alert to the bustle around her.

Even though she lives near the main train station, in a neighborhood badly hit by the fighting, she has not missed a performance and cannot imagine doing so. “This is what helps me get through this situation,” she said, pressing the button that sounded a bell to tell the performers to take their places. “For me, it is not a job. It is the only place I can come and relax.”

Before the war, the chorus had 75 performers. Now it is under 30. One-third of them have fled the city, including the most popular singers. All four conductors have fled, too, though fortunately several of the musicians can conduct in a pinch. One of the violinists was conducting “Gypsy Princess” that afternoon.

A warehouse containing most of the company’s sets was burned during the fighting over the Donetsk airport last fall. It has enough scenery for only 15 productions now, down from the usual 30.

“Sometimes we are full, sometimes we have just a few people,” said Mr. Kornienko, the advertising director, as he studied the matinee crowd of 155. “If you are afraid to go to the bus station, you do not go to the opera.”

Backstage before the performance, Roman Belgorodsky, one of the dancers, dressed in a top hat and tails, prepared to go on stage.

“It is hard to keep your mind on the performance because of the conflict,” said Mr. Belgorodsky, 23. “But the explosions are not so loud here, so being here helps me to forget. Then afterwards, though, I must go outside and return to the dark reality.”