Anna Karenina, by Rodion Schedrin
Anna Karenina parte 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIytrBBcd54
Anna Karenina parte 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MFvwmt6kEQ
Anna Karenina parte 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zECWTwnNFK4
Anna Karenina parte 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wb3PM1yFKew
Anna Karenina parte 5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_wjlAyIVJ8
Maja Pliseckaja, Aleksandar Godunov,Vladimir
Tihonov
Anna Karenina Bolshoi Ballet (1974)
Screen: 4 Dances by
the Bolshoi Ballet at the Beacon:The Program
http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9507E4D61438E732A25756C1A9649D946890D6CF
Three new Soviet
dance films and one old one, each with the Bolshoi Ballet, go on view today and
tomorrow at the Beacon Theater, Broadway and West 74th Street.
For those who don't
care to sit through eight hours straight of screenings — separate tickets are
required for each show — some preferences might be in order. There is only one
clinker in the lot, and that is "Ivan the Terrible" (1977). By
contrast, "Spartacus" (1975), with magnificent performances by
Vladimir Vassiliev and Maris Liepa is not to be missed. "Romeo and
Juliet," a rerun of the famed 1954 film version of Leonid Lavrovsky's
ballet with the great Galina Ulanova is hors concours as a classic and deserves
to be seen on those grounds alone.
That leaves
"Anna Karenina" (1974), the only Bolshoi production in this series
never seen live on an American stage. It is very openly a vehicle for Maya
Plisetskaya, the Bolshoi's prima ballerina, and any opportunity to see her
flick an eyelash is a privilege. The choreography is credited to Miss Plisetskaya
— at the 1972 premiere, Natalia Ryzhenko and Viktor Smirnov were called
assistant choreographers — and it is not difficult to arrive at the conclusion
that Miss Plisetskaya is a greater dancer than a choreographer. Aleksandr
Godunov is the passionate Vronsky to Miss Plisetskaya's Anna.
With a dramatic score
by Rodion Schedrin, this "Anna Karenina" as both ballet and film
falls far short of its subject. The tone is more Pierre Cardin than Tolstoy,
and Mr. Cardin did, in fact, design the pretty chiffon bustles that Miss
Plisetskaya wears from scene to scene. Certainly it is more of a film with
ballet than a filmed ballet. Shots of real snow, real buildings and a real
train are crosscut with stage sets while the camerawork is strongly stylized.
Miss Plisetskaya's
sympathies are clearly with the adulterous heroine rather than with the
disapproving milieu around her. Yuri Vladimirov as the stationmaster of the
novel is nonetheless made to act as Anna's symbolic conscience, and there is a
clear attempt at psychological interpretation in such scenes as the pas de
trois of Anna, Vronsky and Karenin, portrayed by Vladimir Tikhonov.
In its theme of Anna
versus society, however, this is a pretty schematic rendering of a great novel.
Divided mainly into ensembles and duets, it gives Miss Plisetskaya and Mr.
Godunov some fine melodramatic movements, but the choreography is conventional.
The celebrated scene at the races comes off best. In bit parts, Nina Sorokina
is seen as Kitty and Mariana Sedova as Betsy.
Yuri Grigorovich's
"Spartacus" already familiar to American audiences, comes into its
own here as both ballet and film. The inherent cinematic approach in Mr.
Grigorovich's staging of Aram
Khatchaturian's score falls perfectly in place. The soliloquies become closeups,
and no back curtain is needed for what were the simulated dissolves on stage.
Vladimir Vassiliev, as the slave who leads an unsuccessful revolt against the
Romans, dances and acts on a heroic level that is the performance of lifetime.
Maris Liepa matches him on every point magnificently as the villain, the Roman
general Crassus. Natalia Bessmertnova and Nina Timofeyeva round out the
ballet's great original cast. With its phalanxes confronting the camera head-on
and its slow-motion shots of Mr. Vassiliev soaring through the sky, the film
takes its chances. It is also one of the best dance films ever made.
Unfortunately, the
camera has ruined any strong dramatic points made in Mr. Grigorovich's
"Ivan the Terrible." Some of the best choreography, such as the
battle with the Mongol invaders, is lost in a blur of multiple exposure. We are
left with Yuri Vladimirov's impressively crazed facial expressions and the
support given him by Miss Bessmertnova and Boris Akimov. The closeups however,
recall Sergei Eisenstein's own film of "Ivan the Terrible," and not
to this version's advantage.
Maya Plisetskaya
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_Plisetskaya
Maya Mikhaylovna
Plisetskaya, born 20 November 1925. is a Russian ballet dancer, choreographer,
ballet director, and actress, frequently cited as one of the greatest ballerinas
of the 20th century. Plisetskaya danced during the Soviet era at the same time
as the great Galina Ulanova, and took over from her as prima ballerina assoluta
of the Bolshoi in 1960.
Among her most
notable performances was a 1975 free-form dance, in a modern style, set to
Ravel’s Boléro. In it, she dances a solo piece on an elevated round stage, surrounded
and accompanied by 40 male dancers. One reviewer writes, “Words cannot compare
to the majesty and raw beauty of Plisetskaya’s performance:”
What makes the piece
so compelling is that although Plisetskaya may be accompanied by dozens of
other dancers mirroring her movement, the first and only focus is on the prima
ballerina herself. Her continual rocking and swaying at certain points, rhythmically
timed to the syncopation of the orchestra, create a mesmerizing effect that
demonstrated an absolute control over every nuance of her body, from the
smallest toe to her fingertips, to the top of her head
Personal life
Career friendships
Plisetskaya's tour
manager, Maxim Gershunoff, who also helped promote the Soviet/American Cultural
Exchange Program, describes her as “not only a great artist, but also very
realistic and earthy . . . . with a very open and honest outlook on life.”
During her tours
abroad she became friends with a number of other theater and music artists,
including composer and pianist Leonard Bernstein, with whom she remained good
friends until his death. Pianist Arthur Rubenstein, another friend, was able to
converse with her in in Russian. She visited him after his concert performance
in Russia.
Novelist John Steinbeck was her and her husband's guest at their home in
Moscow. She remembers him telling her, after hearing about her career
hardships, that the backstage side of ballet could make for a “most interesting
novel.”
In 1962, the Bolshoi
was invited to perform at the White House by president John F. Kennedy, and she
recalls that first lady Jacqueline Kennedy greeted her by saying “You’re just
like Anna Karenina.”
While in France in 1965,
she was invited to the home of Russian artist Marc Chagall and his wife.
Chagall had moved to France
to study art in 1910. He asked her if she wouldn't mind creating some ballet
poses to help him with his current project, a mural for the new Metropolitan
Opera House in New York,
which would show various images representing the arts. She danced and posed in
various positions as he sketched, and her images were used on the mural, “at
the top left corner, a colorful flock of ballerinas,” she points out.
Plisetskaya became friends
with a number of celebrities and notable politicians who greatly admired and
followed her work. She met Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman, then living in the
U.S., after a performance of Anna Karenina Bergman told her that both their
photographs, taken by noted photographer Richard Avedon, appeared on the same
page in Vogue magazine. Bergman suggested she “flee Communism,” recalls
Plisetskaya, telling her “I will help you.”
Actress Shirley
MacLaine once held a party for her and the other members of the Bolshoi. She
remembered seeing her perform in Argentina
when Plisetskaya was sixty-five, and writes “how humiliating it was that
Plisetskaya had to dance on a vaudeville stage in South
America to make ends meet.” Dancer Daniel Nagrin notes that Plisetskaya
was among those dancers who “went on to perform to the joy of audiences
everywhere while simultaneously defying the myth of early retirement.”
MacLaine’s brother,
actor Warren Beatty, also got to know Plisetskaya during that period, and is
said to have been inspired by their friendship, which led him to write and
produce his 1981 film Reds, about the Russian Revolution. He directed the film
and costarred with Diane Keaton. He first met Plisetskaya at a reception in Beverly Hills, and, notes
Beatty's biographer Peter Biskind, “he was smitten” by her “classic dancer’s”
beauty.
She also became
friends with film star Natalie Wood and her sister, actress Lana Wood. Wood,
whose parents immigrated from Russia,
greatly admired Plisetskaya, and once had an expensive custom wig made for her
to use in the Spartacus ballet. They enjoyed socializing together on Wood’s
yacht.
Friendship with
Robert F. Kennedy
U.S. Attorney General
Robert F. Kennedy, the younger brother to president John F. Kennedy, befriended
Plisetskaya, with whom he coincidentally shared the same birth date. She was
invited to gatherings with Kennedy and his family at their estate on Cape Cod in 1962. They later named their sailboat “Maya”,
in her honor
As the Cuban Missile
Crisis had ended a few weeks earlier, at the end of October, 1962, U.S. and Soviet
relations were at a low point. Diplomats of both countries considered her
friendship with Kennedy to be a great benefit to warmer relations, after weeks
of worrisome military confrontation. Years later, when they met in 1968, he was
then campaigning for the presidency, and diplomats again suggested that their
friendship would continue to help relations between the two countries.
Plisetskaya summarizes Soviet thoughts on the matter:
Maya Plisetskaya
should bring the candidate presents worthy of the great moment. Stun the future
president with Russian generosity to continue and deepen contacts and friendship.
Of their friendship,
Plisetskaya writes in her autobiography:
With me Robert
Kennedy was romantic, elevated, noble, and completely pure. No seductions, no
passes.
Robert Kennedy was
assassinated just days before he was to see Plisetskaya again in New York. Gershunoff,
Plisetskaya's manager at the time, recalls that on the day of the funeral, most
of the theaters and concert halls in New
York City went “dark,” closed in mourning and respect.
The Bolshoi likewise planned to cancel their performance, but they decided
instead to do a different ballet than planned, one dedicated to Kennedy.
Gershunoff describes
that evening:
The most appropriate
way to open such an evening would be for the great Plisetskaya to perform The
Dying Swan, which normally would close an evening’s program to thunderous
applause with stamping feet, and clamors for an encore. . . . This assignment
created an emotional burden for Maya. She really did not want to dance that
work that night. . . I thought it was best for me to remain backstage in the
wings. That turned out to be one of the most poignant moments I have ever
experienced. Replacing the usual thunderous audience applause at the
conclusion, there was complete silence betokening the feelings of a mourning
nation in the packed, cavernous Metropolitan Opera House. Maya came off the
stage in tears, looked at me, raised her beautiful arms and looked upward. Then
disappeared into her dressing room.
photos
https://www.google.hr/search?q=maja+pliseckaja&client=opera&hs=Y6B&channel=suggest&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=Z5TmUrSYHeb9ygPv8oKoBA&ved=0CCoQsAQ&biw=1024&bih=639
Alexander Godunov
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Godunov
Alexander Borisovich
Godunov , November 28, 1949 – May 18, 1995., nicknamed "Sasha", was a
Russian-American danseur and film actor, whose defection caused a diplomatic
incident between the United States
and the Soviet Union.
On August 21, 1979,
while on a tour with the Bolshoi Ballet in New York City, Godunov contacted authorities
and asked for political asylum. After discovering his absence, the KGB
responded by putting his wife, Ludmilla Vlasova, a soloist with the company, on
a plane to Moscow, but the flight was stopped before take-off. After three
days, with involvement by U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Soviet leader Leonid
Brezhnev, the U.S.
State Department was satisfied that Vlasova had chosen to leave of her own free
will, and allowed the plane to depart.
Godunov joined the
American Ballet Theatre and danced as a principal dancer until 1982 when he had
a falling-out with his long-time friend and director of the company Mikhail
Baryshnikov.
Godunov became a
naturalized citizen of the United
States in 1987.
Marriage and
relationships
Godunov married
Ludmilla Vlasova, a soloist with the Bolshoi Ballet in 1971. The couple had no
children and divorced in 1982.
In 1981, Godunov met
actress Jacqueline Bisset at a party in New
York City. They began a long term relationship six
months later. They broke up in 1988.
On May 18, 1995,
Godunov's friends became concerned when he had been uncharacteristically quiet
with his phone calls. A nurse who had not heard from him since May 8 went to
his home in the Shoreham Towers, West
Hollywood, California,
where his body was discovered. Godunov's death was later determined to be
caused by complications from hepatitis due to chronic alcoholism.
His ashes were
scattered into the Pacific Ocean; his memorial at Gates Mortuary in Los Angeles is engraved
with the epitaph "His future remained in the past."
photos
https://www.google.hr/search?q=aleksandr+godunov&client=opera&hs=rFX&channel=suggest&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=q5vmUqiZMMb7yAOG1YGIBw&ved=0CCcQsAQ&biw=1024&bih=639
Vladimir Tikhonov
Date of Birth 29 February 1948 , Moscow,
Russian SFSR, USSR,now
Russia
Date of Death 1990 , Moscow,
Russian SFSR, USSR,
now Russia,
- heart failure
Birth Name,Vladimir
Vyacheslavovich Tikhonov
He was an actor,
known for Russkoye pole (1973), Zakhvat (1982) and O lyubvi (1966). He was
married to Natalya Egorova and Natalya Varley. He died in 1990 in Moscow.
Natalya Egorova,
(1975 - 1990) his death, 1 child
Natalya Varley, - divorced,
1 child
The son of Vyacheslav
Tikhonov and Nonna Mordyukova.