Music
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Russia and the Rebel
Russian music about rebels is remembered most for its ecstatic love themes …
The Ballad of Stenka Razin. Poem by Dmitry Sadovnikiv (1883), music [trad?]
Stenka Razin (1630-71, leader of the Cossack revolt against the Boyars [feudal lords], sacrifices his young bride in the Volga River to placate his grumbling crew, and arouses them to carouse “where beauty lies”.
“Volga, Volga, Mother Volga, Make this lovely girl a grave!”
Stenka Razin — Russian Red Army Choir
(2) Spartacus. Ballet, Aram Khachaturian (1954)
Gladiator slave Spartacus (103-71 BCE) leads a slave revolt against Rome and frees slave girl Phrygia. They celebrate their short-lived liberty in the famous Adagio before Spartacus is captured and summarily executed by the Romans.
The Adagio of Spartacus and Phrygia — Moscow State Symphony Orchestra, cond. Azim Karimov.
The great climax starts around 5:30.
This was a wonderful moment in the film. I was privileged to attend Marriage of Figaro in the theatre in Prague where apparently Mozart was also present, in 19Canteen. I agree that it was subversive, the whole point of the opera is to point out the idiocy of the masters and to relate us with the servants. Plus it had the greatest opera songs of all time.
I’ve sometimes wondered what music I would select, if I had to go on BBC’s Desert Island Discs. I wonder no longer! My comrades on this forum have given me the complete playlist. Thank you one and all!
Saw this Pink Floyd tribute band earlier this week. Brilliant!
Sorry! Wrong thread. Mind you, the full set is as long as a film!
Political Prisoners’ Chorus Ludwig van Beethoven (1805)
Beethoven’s opera Fidelio is based on a French play of the Reign of Terror, that took place just a decade earlier, and it contains a scene in which the broken political prisoners are temporarily let out into the yard.
Staged opera operates without the visual resources of cinema, and modern productions give the director free reign to improvise with the setting, but however he represents or misrepresents it on stage this harrowing basis of the Shawshank scene remains indescribably moving.
It was on the eve of the 1849 Dresden uprising, after a performance of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony that Mikhail Bakunin approached the conductor Richard Wagner and passionately declared “if everything else goes down in the revolution, we must see to it that Beethoven’s 9th survives”.
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