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cannes loser still makes compelling viewing
 Director Pavel Lungin's film "The Marriage" (Svadba,) his fourth feature and latest effort, is at last on screen in St. Petersburg. "The Marriage" was first showcased at Cannes in May, but received a comparatively lukewarm ... |
relive stagnation on 6th corner
I don't know about you, but I, for one, have always been fascinated by the Russian writer Sergei Dovlatov. His stories, written mostly during the Brezhnev period of Stagnation, are a fine example of that heart-gripping mixture of the ordinary and the grotesque, the funny and the sad, the noble and the pathetic. Even though I am quite happy with the present day, I invariably get nostalgic over the ugly, insane, yet hilarious Soviet existence depicted in his books. This is just the way one is bound to feel at the Shestoi Ugol (Sixth Corner) Retro Eatery, Drinkery & Sleepery, a restaurant-club, which brings you back to the mad world of god-awful ... |
tales of hoffmann: a feminist look at romantic opera
The world revolves around women - such is the attitude of one female opera director who is preparing to unveil her version of Jacques Offenbach's "The Tales Of Hoffmann," a story of one poet's doomed love for a mechanical doll, a singer and a Venetian courtesan. The director in question is Marta Domingo, and the production premieres on Saturday, Nov. 11, at the Mariinsky Theater. "The Tales Of Hoffmann" - unfinished at the time of Offenbach's death and completed by Ernest Guiraud - first saw the stage at the Opera-Comique in Paris in 1881. Since then, the piece has enjoyed much attention from opera directors, and this time Marta Domingo will ... |
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standing ovation for final early music concerts
At the St. Petersburg Cappella, the Third International Festival of Early Music had its triumphant conclusion on Sunday. The best was saved till last with the concerts of the great Dutch harpsichordist and organist Gustav Leonhardt and the British countertenor, Michael Chance, whose voice is fantastically even-toned, possessing a brilliantly refined baroque singing technique. For the whole of October and early November, the festival concerts have brought together sizable crowds at the Cappella and Philharmonic as well as at the Menshikov and Sheremetev Palaces. The festival was the focus of diverse musical interests: Some people ... |
kino honored in tribute album
 Tribute albums have finally made their way onto the Russian music market. Although the independent record label FeeLee released a Depeche Mode tribute in 1998, the current tribute to the seminal Russian group Kino released ... |
freeman's salome gives literal take on symbolism
You can't step twice into the same river, as the Greek philosopher Heraclitus once said, and it was indeed a risky move for British director David Freeman to stage his second symbolist opera production in a row at the Mariinsky Theater. Freeman's naturalistic approach to Richard Strauss' "Salome" came as quite a surprise, something you perhaps would not expect from the author of such an image-rich production as his 1991 version of Prokofiev's opera "The Fiery Angel." In this new production, the director strives to make everything visual to such an extent that he nearly eliminates the enigmatic nature of this opera based on Oscar ... |
