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1983
             
In Leningrad, the Kirov Opera and Ballet Theater was marking its 200 years in the business. Starting off with operas written by 18th-century court composers, the theater had, over the years, moved on to stage the operatic and ballet masterpieces by Mozart, Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini. It was with the Mariinsky theater in mind (the name the company took on in the mid-19th century) that Giuseppe Verdi wrote his La Forza del Destino opera.
In 1836 the Mariinsky offered the premiere of Mikhail Glinka's opera A Life for the Czar which ushered in a new era in Russian art. The opera, Russia's first national opera classic, was later followed up by similar evergreens written by Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin and Tchaikovsky.
The Mariinsky company boasted the very best singers the country could offer, among them the great bass Fyodor Chaliapin. The dance department was equally formidable with the early 20th-century lineup featuring such world-famous luminaries as Anna Pavlova, Mikhail Fokine and Vaclav Nijinsky…
After the 1917 socialist revolution, the Mariinsky was given the status of a State Theater and in 1935 the name of the city's late Communist boss Sergei Kirov. It was only in 1992 that Mariinsky got back its old name…
Yuri Temirkanov, who took over the Mariinsky company and orchestra in 1976, prepared his very own version of Tchaikovsky opera Yevgeny Onegin for the theater's 200th birthday celebration….
Never to be outdone by its Leningrad rival, Moscow's Bolshoi Theater was all set to wow the theatergoing public with a new dramatization of Rimsky-Korsakov's opera The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh. In Soviet years the opera was rarely staged apparently because of its religious undertones. Whenever it was, it was so mercilessly decimated that the whole idea was hardly visible at all… This time round, conductor Yevgeny Svetlanov offers a completely unabridged version of Rimsky-Korsakov's famous opera…
The premiere at the Bolshoi is absolutely mind-boggling with the stage decorations provided by the trendy Moscow artist Ilya Glazunov and the cast featuring the company's top singers, including Vladislav Piavko who offers an absolutely unforgettable image of the hard-drinking clown and traitor Grishka Kuterma…
In socialist Russia where all people are supposed to be equals, staging operas, ballets, whatever, expressly for anyone, even a genius, is rarely encouraged. Actors and singers, especially operatic singers, usually don't have much time to wait, however, eager to realize their God-given talent in the short few years they have on stage… In Moscow, Yevgeny Nesterenko dreams about singing Mephistopheles' part in Arrigo Boito's opera of the same name. Realizing that no one was burning to stage Boito's work, the Bolshoi's leading bass singer gathers a team of like-minded colleagues and performs the opera in the Conservatory Big Hall in Moscow.
Yevgeny Nesterenko's Mephistopheles, perfidious, seducing, cunning and all-powerful, was a real revelation to every true connoisseur of art in the country…
Two young prodigies, Vadim Repin and Yevgeny Kisin, are the talk of the whole country. The 12-year-old cellist Vadim Repin hails from Siberia where he is studying at Novosibirsk conservatory in the class of Professor Zakhar Bron. One year before that, Vadim won the Grand Prix participating in the Lipinski and Wenjawski international junior contest in Poland.
Vadim Repin started out playing the accordion only to flunk his entrance exams to a music school and was offered instead to take up the less popular violin. It was a lucky strike indeed that turned around the boy's whole life!
The other whiz kid, Moscow's very own Yevgeny Kisin, was literally born in love with the piano. And with a good reason too because the boy's hands are amazingly well suited to tickle the ivories…
Yevgeny Kisin makes music sound like a piece of poetry getting down to the very soul of Schumann, Liszt and Chopin playing like one who has a whole life behind his back…
Yevgeny Kisin never took part in competitions being one of the handful of world stars who have worked their way up to the very top bypassing competitions.
After a long absence, the famed Bulgarian bass Nikolai Gyaurov is performing in Moscow again. A Moscow conservatory graduate, Gyaurov once had a stint at the Bolshoi Theater. A welcome guest at the world's leading venues, he retains warm memories of the years he had spent in Moscow.
Nikolai Gyaurov performs at the Bolshoi and each number he sings there drowns in tumultuous applause by the appreciative audience…
Gyaurov tells the journalists he will be back again and again but it won't be long before diabetes, this insidious malaise, which has always been the scourge of opera singers around the world eventually ruins his amazing voice...
They set up a rock club in Leningrad bringing together under one roof bands representing different styles of Soviet rock. Viktor Tsoi and his Kino band espouse heavy rock with its trademark wall of richly-textured sound coupled with serious, even tragic, lyrics…
Another new band, Bravo, is more into the traditional rock-n-roll format. Their songs are hooky, danceable and kick butt with singer Zhanna Aguzarova's extravagantly oversized male boots and jacket winning cheers from their many young fans.
Film director Karen Shakhnazarov unveils his We're From Jazz musical set in the Twenties where jazz was only beginning to assert itself in Russia.
The film's main characters are all young jazzmen who are dead serious about their music. The beautiful tunes contributed by the prominent composer Anatoly Kroll quickly catch on with the people selling in millions of record copies across the nation…
 
THE RUSSIAN MUSICAL HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 20TH CENTURY is prepared for you by Olga Fyodorova.


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