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                    ''It's a masterpiece!" proclaimed poet-laureate Yevgeny Yevtushenko to AP after the performance of Sergei Dreznin's musical drama the Club Moscow, Manhattan.''And AIDS  actually IS the modern plague''
                    That performance celebrated Pushkin Bicentennial June 6 1999
                    The singers were Reinwald Kranner (Ausitra), Amelia De Mayo, Robert Vernon, Jean-Michelle Grier, MIchael Stromar and Sam Hutcheson

     
        a musical drama by Sergei Dreznin based on the Small Tragedy by Alexander Pushkin
        for the new translation by Matvey Yankelevich click here
                 
          Text: Alexander Pushkin (1830)
              read the synopsis with the audio clips (RealAudio)
                           
                           Small Tragedy by Alexander Pushkin
                          was set to music by Sergei Dreznin
                          and performed in Russian clubs before Perestroyka... The singers were Sergei Minayev, Yelena Karetnikova, Tania Kabash, Anatoly Dorovskikh, Mikhail Saltykov.

                          1991 together with Don Juan it formed the
                          CrossRoads, the first musical co-production between  Moscow and Vienna with performances in  Berlin, Moscow and Vienna..


     
           
           
          Feast During the Plague, one of four so called Short Tragedies by Russia's great and the most beloved poet Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin is actually based on one scene from the tragedy "A City of the Plague" by John Willson, a member of the Lake School. Pushkin's Small tragedies were written in the Autumn of 1830. Just a month before his marriage, Pushkin was locked in his estate Boldino in the North of Russia by the quarantine - cholera broke in the region. Nobody could get through check-points. This forced inmprisonment turnt out to be a golden hour for the Russian literature. 
             
             
             


             
             

           
           

           

          		 A Plague posseses the City.„A sreet. A table is set. Several men and women feasting“. Amidst the plague, surrounded by death and human suffering, day after day they are celebrating what may be their last feast, recklessly challenging the death itself. Young Man suggests a toast in honor of „old joker“ Jackson, who was the first of them to move to „that cold underground estate“ of Death.Song: The Beginning Who will now chase away the darkness and gloome cast by the plague upon their minds? Walsingham, the Chairman, asks his companion Mary to sing one of her native songs. That song brings back the horrors of the old time's plague, of the burned villages and empty forsets, of life that turned into death, and sound that went silent. What survived was love of Edmund and his faithul -- even in heaven -- Jenny. The memories of the past, free and pure, envelope the table....Mary's Song
          Luisa abruptly puts an end to all these lamentations, she hates Mary who managed touch the heart of Walsingham, as her rival. A cart passes, filled with dead bodies. Luisa faints... „The cruel is weaker than the tender“.
          The celebration must continue, and Walsingham in order  to lift  spirit around the table sings a Hymn to the Plague

          There’s rapture in a battle’s view,
          And in a chasm's gloomy hue
          And in the raging ocean’s fury,
          Midst angry waves and darkness vague,
          And in the desert whirlwinds hurry ,
          And in the breeze that brings the Plague.

          Enter old clergyman. In vain he tryes to stop the blasphemous feast, threatning young people with hell and eternal suffering. Nor does he reach Walsingham’s heart in the name of his recently lost mother - Walsingham won’t follow the Preist and leave this feast. Walsingham's Answer to the Priest
          Only the vision of his dead wife Mathilda, the sound of her angelic voice emerging in Walsingham’s mind like the voice of his conscience, has a magic effect on him. „Exit Priest. The feast goes on. Chairman remains sunken in deep thought.

           

          This recording was made in Vienna. Pushkin verces are sung in German translation. 1989 Krassnij Angel Company led by Sergei Dreznin gave the play its Austrian premiere. Singers were Silvia Amort, Victor Gernot, Reinwald Kramer, Thomas Frank, Schlomit Butbul.
           
           
           

          One of the basic works of Russian literature that kept its actuality in Russia and elswhere.

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