While the world is agog at the lurid goings-on, most Russians have hardly raised an eyebrow at the headline-grabbing scandals, knowing that their ''big theatre'' merely mirrors the country, where corruption and cruelty are off the scale. ''What's to be shocked about? Everyone knows the Bolshoi Theatre is a big cloaca [arsehole]; the whole country's a big cloaca,'' a blogger wrote to the Echo of Moscow radio station.

And indeed, what's to be shocked about in a country so corrupt that ambulances are converted into taxis so that VIPs can beat traffic jams; a country so lost in its own lies that it is putting a dead man, anti-corruption whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky, on trial for ''tax evasion''?

The trouble at the Bolshoi may be just business as usual for cynical Russians, but for the rest of the world it is mindboggling and sad - given that the theatre only reopened 18 months ago after a costly, six-year renovation.

''Our country is big but at the same time, we have very few unifying symbols, national treasures, so-called national 'brands','' then president Dmitry Medvedev said at the reopening in 2011. ''The Bolshoi is one of our greatest national brands. Thank you to all who worked for the return of our national miracle, our great national brand, the Bolshoi Theatre!''

How the hapless Medvedev, who kept Vladimir Putin's seat warm until he could return to the presidency in 2012, must be regretting those words now. For if the Bolshoi Theatre could be physically saved from subsiding into the underground river on which it was built in the 18th century, it seems nothing can haul it out of the moral morass into which it has sunk.

First there was the acid attack on the night of January 17. The Bolshoi ballet's handsome artistic director, Sergei Filin, was on his way home from the theatre when somebody called out to him across the dark yard of his block of flats. He turned and an assailant flung sulphuric acid in his face. He managed to reduce the burning by rubbing snow into his skin but has needed medical treatment in both Russia and Germany to save his sight and will not return to work until later this year.

Suspicion immediately fell on the Bolshoi's narcissistic, raven-haired principal dancer, Nikolai Tsiskaridze, who has openly said he wants the job of general director Anatoly Iksanov and whom Iksanov has accused of poisonous politicking. But Tsiskaridze denied being behind the attack and police cleared him.

Instead, earlier this month, they detained Pavel Dmitrichenko, 29, known for his performances in baddy roles, including that of Tsar Ivan the Terrible. Held along with Dmitrichenko in the dawn raid were Yuri Zarutsky, a thug with a criminal record who is accused of throwing the acid, and Andrei Lipatov, identified as the getaway driver. The three have been charged with ''acting as a group to cause grievous bodily harm'' and have been remanded in custody until April 18.

No sooner had the shock waves from the dancer's arrest subsided than Anastasia Volochkova, a former prima ballerina sacked in 2003 for being ''too fat'', caused a fresh storm by alleging that young hopefuls from the corps de ballet were regularly pimped out and forced to sleep with oligarchs or risk losing their jobs.

''Girls are invited each in turn by the administrator, who explains that they are going to a party, with dinner and a follow-up, in bed and going all the way,'' said Volochkova, who has had her own name linked with various oligarchs in the past. Iksanov dismissed her accusations as ''dirt and ravings''.

If all that was not bad enough, it emerged last week that one of the theatre's once up-and-coming tenors had been arrested for embezzling money his colleagues were collecting to buy dachas (holiday cottages) in the country. Sergei Gaidei, wanted by police for three years since he ripped off his fellow artists, had been discovered by chance by traffic police checking documents, the daily Moskovsky Komsomolets said. He'd been hiding out in his native region, passing himself off as a motor mechanic.

''It beggars belief,'' said a Russian friend with whom I sometimes go to the opera. ''You remember Gaidei. We saw him on the temporary stage [when the main theatre was closed for renovation], singing the role of Macduff in Macbeth. It's as if Pavarotti had stolen Joan Sutherland's handbag and run off to a village to bake pizzas.''

He added: ''In Russia, when you get to the bottom of things, you usually find it's all about bablo [money].''

Knowing their venal bureaucrats and bent justice system as they do, Russians are not inclined to believe the police when they say they have sewn up the acid attack case with the arrest of one dancer, however villainous he may be. Looking pale and dishevelled, with dark rings under his eyes, Dmitrichenko was paraded on television and said to have confessed to masterminding the attack.

At a preliminary court hearing, he told the judge: ''I told Yuri Zarutsky [one of the alleged accomplices] about the policies of the Bolshoi Theatre, about the bad things going on, the corruption. When he said, 'OK, let me beat him up, hit him on the head', I agreed, but that is all I admit to doing. It's not true that I ordered him to throw acid at Filin.'' The rumour mill started up and the speculation was that Dmitrichenko had avenged his ballerina girlfriend Anzhelina Vorontsova, who'd supposedly been sidelined by Filin. The artistic director, who had brought her from the provinces to Moscow, was said to be miffed that she'd transferred her loyalty to the principal dancer, Tsiskaridze, and was denying the girl her dream of starring in Swan Lake.

But this script was somehow unconvincing. Dmitrichenko's colleagues described him as hot-tempered but not calculating. Some thought his confession had been forced. It was unlikely such a young man could be the real puppet master, they said. And could petty jealousies and rows over roles have provoked such a vicious, mafia-style attack?

It was as a sceptic of the police version that Volochkova waded into the furore and her assertions about pimping were not all she wanted to get off her chest. In an interview with Echo of Moscow, she spoke of serious corruption at the Bolshoi, called for government intervention and mentioned a name that has not been heard outside narrow ballet circles since the mid-1990s.

''I don't know what more needs to happen at the Bolshoi Theatre before the government steps in,'' she said. ''Murder, shooting, war, what? When such things happen, it's time to think. Such a situation as we have today, when money decides everything, would have been impossible when Yuri Grigorovich ran the theatre for 30 years. Because he was a real maestro. Until the theatre gets a creative personality who knows what he's doing, such anarchy will continue.''

Grigorovich, artistic director of the Bolshoi throughout the Brezhnev era, was a controversial figure, loved by some for his talent but hated by others for his dictatorial ways. He was famous for a production of Aram Khachaturian's Spartacus, a ballet about an uprising of Roman slaves that chimed well with the Communist ideology of the time. He was eased out under Boris Yeltsin when the Zeitgeist called for a more modern repertoire and a transition from the Soviet jobs-for-life system to a regime of renewable contracts. Grigorovich did not go quietly; loyal dancers went on strike in protest at his forced retirement in 1995.

Except that it seems he has not entirely retired. The Bolshoi Theatre website shows that at the age of 86, Grigorovich is still on the staff as a consultant and choreographer. And the split between traditionalists and modernists apparently remains, with Tsiskaridze, Volochkova and Dmitrichenko giving allegiance to the old school.

Those who have tried to modernise the Bolshoi have had a hard struggle. Vladimir Vasiliev, who replaced Grigorovich, lost his job when Putin came to power. Gennady Yanin, the head of the ballet troupe, had his hopes of becoming artistic director dashed when gay pornographic images, supposedly showing him in various poses, were splashed over the internet. Before the acid attack, Filin had his email accounts hacked and his car tyres slashed - all the sort of dirty tricks the KGB used to play.

Extraordinarily, principal dancer Tsiskaridze, who is reported by some Russian media to enjoy the patronage of one Sergei Chemezov, a tycoon and old KGB crony of Putin, was allowed to air his ambitions of running the Bolshoi on the pro-Kremlin channel NTV. He accused current chief Iksanov of botching the theatre's reconstruction - it now looked like a ''Turkish hotel'', he said - ruining the repertoire and treating the dancers like slaves. Asked if he was ready to step into the general director's shoes, he said: ''I am absolutely ready.''

Putin, who is more often associated with sport than culture, has not commented on the Bolshoi scandal. Speaking up for Iksanov, one theatre source said he was a good manager who ''knows the name of everybody in the theatre, down to the usherettes and cleaning ladies''.

Iksanov himself said the Bolshoi and his administration were under a ''concerted attack'' from people he refused to name pending the court verdict. ''They are creating conditions to distract us from our creative work but that won't happen. Our troupe works well and produces a quality product, which we will continue to do.''

Underlining that the show would go on, the Bolshoi pressed ahead with plans for its ''Rite of Spring'' international dance festival to mark the 100th anniversary of the first performance of Igor Stravinsky's ballet of the same name. Last week, in decidedly unseasonal spring blizzards, ballet fans queued to book seats. ''Why do you journalists have to dig dirt? Let's just see what the court decides,'' said a perfumed woman, as she wafted out of the box office, clutching tickets.

On the square outside, others were more talkative. ''There was always conflict between the administration and artists,'' said Irina Alexandrovna. ''I know because I used to work for the Ministry of Culture for 10 years. But this settling of scores has taken matters to a whole new level. I'm glad to be out of culture. I sell arms now, hunting rifles to people with licences. It's a much nicer job.''

''The Bolshoi Theatre is a bardak [a slang word meaning both mess and whorehouse],'' said out-of-work actor Alexander Karbyshev, who was plying his trade as a Lenin lookalike for tourists near Red Square. ''And to think, in Soviet times we used to take our children there for a cultural education.''

Said Vika Abuzarova, who plays the dombra, a kind of lute, in a folk orchestra: ''It's the same in every state institution in Russia. Corruption and fights over money. It's just that it's on a bigger scale at the Bolshoi.''

A source at Mosconcert, the state concert agency that employs musicians and singers who are a notch or two down from the Bolshoi, explained how corruption worked in his organisation. ''Thanks to the taxpayer, we get big subsidies. The money goes to our army of administrators, who do nothing except sit around, drinking tea. They award all kinds of bonuses to themselves and only a little of the money trickles down to the artists.

''It's worse than Soviet times, when everybody got more or less the same. Now your pay is in the gift of individual managers. It's so corrupt that the director and the leader of the trade union is one and the same person. If this is happening with us, think how much bigger the corruption must be at the Bolshoi, with the enormous budgets they have.''

It's interesting to note that some Russian media are referring to Dmitrichenko as the ''unofficial'' leader of the Bolshoi dancers. After his arrest, 300 of the theatre's artists wrote a letter in his support and elected him head of their trade union, even though he's behind bars. It seems Dmitrichenko may have challenged the unfair distribution of bonuses and perks.

Wages aside, there's the question of how much money was spent on the Bolshoi renovation and where it went. Officially, the restoration bill came to $US688 million, paid for from federal funds, but investigative journalists put the real cost at $US1.1 billion.

Overspent budgets, corruption and workers' exploitation - it all sounds familiar to those following, for example, the preparation for the Winter Olympics in Sochi next year. Mafia-style attacks - it's not just acid but also cement, as a politician learnt to his cost recently when he was killed and stuffed in a barrel of cement, apparently over unpaid debts.

With such violence and corruption in wider society, it's hardly surprising that Russians are shrugging their shoulders at the Bolshoi's spectacle of woes and embarrassments.