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The Bolt (Shostakovich)
''The Bolt'' (russian: Болт), Op. 27, is a ballet music score written by Dmitri Shostakovich between 1930 and 1931 to a libretto by . The humorous and satirical full-length ballet in three acts and seven scenes was choreographed by Fyodor Lopukhov and premiered on 8 April 1931 at the State Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet in Leningrad. It was not performed again until 2005, when a two-act choreography by Alexei Ratmansky was performed at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. Plot The ballet is an ironic tale of slovenly work in a Soviet factory. The lazy Lyonka hates work and together with a local priest and anti-Soviet plotter he plans to sabotage the machinery by putting a bolt in it. Their plan is foiled by a group of Young Communists. Instrumentation Woodwinds: piccolo, 2 flutes (2nd doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, cor anglais, 2 Bb clarinets, Eb clarinet (doubling bass clarinet), 2 bassoons, double bassoon Brass: 6 French horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, 1 tuba Percussi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich, , group=n (9 August 1975) was a Soviet-era Russian composer and pianist who became internationally known after the premiere of his Symphony No. 1 (Shostakovich), First Symphony in 1926 and was regarded throughout his life as a major composer. Shostakovich achieved early fame in the Soviet Union, but had a complex relationship with its government. His 1934 opera ''Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (opera), Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk'' was initially a success, but eventually was Muddle Instead of Music, condemned by the Soviet government, putting his career at risk. In 1948 his work was #Second denunciation, denounced under the Zhdanov Doctrine, with professional consequences lasting several years. Even after his censure was On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences, rescinded in 1956, performances of his music were occasionally subject to state interventions, as with his Symphony No. 13 (Shostakovich), Thirteenth Symphony (1962). Shostakovich was a m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
String Instrument
String instruments, stringed instruments, or chordophones are musical instruments that produce sound from vibrating strings when a performer plays or sounds the strings in some manner. Musicians play some string instruments by plucking the strings with their fingers or a plectrum—and others by hitting the strings with a light wooden hammer or by rubbing the strings with a bow. In some keyboard instruments, such as the harpsichord, the musician presses a key that plucks the string. Other musical instruments generate sound by striking the string. With bowed instruments, the player pulls a rosined horsehair bow across the strings, causing them to vibrate. With a hurdy-gurdy, the musician cranks a wheel whose rosined edge touches the strings. Bowed instruments include the string section instruments of the orchestra in Western classical music (violin, viola, cello and double bass) and a number of other instruments (e.g., viols and gambas used in early music from the Baro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ballets By Alexei Ratmansky
Alexei Osipovich Ratmansky (russian: Алексей Осипович Ратманский, born August 27, 1968) is a Russian-American choreographer and former ballet dancer. From 2004 to 2008 he was the director of the Bolshoi Ballet. He left Russia in 2008. As of April 2014 he was the artist in residence at the American Ballet Theatre. Training and performance career Ratmansky was born in St. Petersburg and trained under Pyotr Pestov and Alexandra Markeyeva at the Bolshoi Ballet School. He graduated in 1986. He then danced in Kyiv and was a principal dancer with the Ukrainian National Ballet, Royal Winnipeg Ballet and Royal Danish Ballet. Choreographic and administrative careers Ratmansky's choreographic career first became notable with his staging of the ballet ''Dreams of Japan'' for the State Ballet of Georgia in 1998. ''Dreams'' and ''Charms of Mannerism'', choreographed in 1997, were both created for Nina Ananiashvili. ''Dreams'' earned the Golden Mask Award fr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1931 Ballet Premieres
Events January * January 2 – South Dakota native Ernest Lawrence invents the cyclotron, used to accelerate particles to study nuclear physics. * January 4 – German pilot Elly Beinhorn begins her flight to Africa. * January 22 – Sir Isaac Isaacs is sworn in as the first Australian-born Governor-General of Australia. * January 25 – Mohandas Gandhi is again released from imprisonment in India. * January 27 – Pierre Laval forms a government in France. February * February 4 – Soviet leader Joseph Stalin gives a speech calling for rapid industrialization, arguing that only strong industrialized countries will win wars, while "weak" nations are "beaten". Stalin states: "We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or they will crush us." The first five-year plan in the Soviet Union is intensified, for the industrialization and collectivization of agriculture. * February 10 – Official ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ballets By Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich, , group=n (9 August 1975) was a Soviet-era Russian composer and pianist who became internationally known after the premiere of his First Symphony in 1926 and was regarded throughout his life as a major composer. Shostakovich achieved early fame in the Soviet Union, but had a complex relationship with its government. His 1934 opera '' Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk'' was initially a success, but eventually was condemned by the Soviet government, putting his career at risk. In 1948 his work was denounced under the Zhdanov Doctrine, with professional consequences lasting several years. Even after his censure was rescinded in 1956, performances of his music were occasionally subject to state interventions, as with his Thirteenth Symphony (1962). Shostakovich was a member of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR (1947) and the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union (from 1962 until his death), as well as chairman of the RSFSR Union of Composers (1960–1968) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ballets By Fedor Lopukhov
''The Limpid Stream'' (russian: Светлый ручей, also translated as ''The Bright Stream'') is a ballet in 3 acts, 4 scenes, composed by Dmitri Shostakovich on the libretto by Adrian Piotrovsky and Fyodor Lopukhov, with choreography by Fyodor Lopukhov. It premiered in Leningrad's Mikhaylovsky Theatre in 1935. Plot The plot centres around a group of ballet dancers who have been sent to provide sophisticated entertainment on a new Soviet collective farm during their harvest festival. The workers, along with two older residents of a nearby dacha, welcome the city dancers, with special welcome given to the troupe's ballerina who was the former dance teacher of Zina. Zina introduces the ballerina to her husband, Pyotr, and Pyotr immediately begins to flirt with the ballerina. Hurt, Zina removes herself from the celebrations and is comforted by the ballerina. The ballerina suggests a plan in which she will dress as her dance partner, her dance partner will dress as a female ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gerard McBurney
Gerard McBurney (born 20 June 1954) is a British composer, arranger, broadcaster, teacher and writer. Life Born in Cambridge, England, he is the son of Charles McBurney, an American archaeologist, and Anne Francis Edmondstone (née Charles), who was a British secretary of English, Scots, and Irish ancestry. Gerard's younger brother is Simon McBurney, an English actor, writer and director. Gerard was educated at Winchester College, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge – where he read English Literature – and at the Moscow Conservatory. Work For many years he lived in London, teaching first at the London College of Music and later, for 12 years, at the Royal Academy of Music. He also worked as artistic advisor with various orchestras, performers and presenters including The Hallé, Complicite and Lincoln Center. In September 2006, he was appointed Artistic Programming Advisor to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Creative Director of the CSO's multimedia series ''Beyo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Golden Age (ballet)
''The Golden Age'' or ''The Age of Gold'' (russian: Золотой век, Zolotoi vek), Op. 22, is a ballet in three acts and six scenes by Dmitri Shostakovich to a libretto by Alexander Ivanovsky. Choreographed by Vasili Vainonen (first act), Leonid Jacobson (second act), and V. Chesnakov (third act), it premiered on 26 October 1930 at the Kirov Theatre. The work was performed eighteen times and was initially censored due to its inclusion of modern European dance styles. Plot summary The ballet is a satirical take on the political and cultural change in 1920s Europe. It follows a Soviet football (soccer) team in a Western city where they come into contact with many politically incorrect antagonistic characters such as the Diva, the Fascist, the Agent Provocateur, the Negro and others. The team falls victim to match rigging, police harassment, and unjust imprisonment by the evil bourgeoisie. The team is freed from jail when the local workers overthrow their capitalist overlords ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Limpid Stream
''The Limpid Stream'' (russian: Светлый ручей, also translated as ''The Bright Stream'') is a ballet in 3 acts, 4 scenes, composed by Dmitri Shostakovich on the libretto by Adrian Piotrovsky and Fyodor Lopukhov, with choreography by Fyodor Lopukhov. It premiered in Leningrad's Mikhaylovsky Theatre in 1935. Plot The plot centres around a group of ballet dancers who have been sent to provide sophisticated entertainment on a new Soviet collective farm during their harvest festival. The workers, along with two older residents of a nearby dacha, welcome the city dancers, with special welcome given to the troupe's ballerina who was the former dance teacher of Zina. Zina introduces the ballerina to her husband, Pyotr, and Pyotr immediately begins to flirt with the ballerina. Hurt, Zina removes herself from the celebrations and is comforted by the ballerina. The ballerina suggests a plan in which she will dress as her dance partner, her dance partner will dress as a femal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Percussion Instrument
A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Excluding zoomusicological instruments and the human voice, the percussion family is believed to include the oldest musical instruments.''The Oxford Companion to Music'', 10th edition, p.775, In spite of being a very common term to designate instruments, and to relate them to their players, the percussionists, percussion is not a systematic classificatory category of instruments, as described by the scientific field of organology. It is shown below that percussion instruments may belong to the organological classes of ideophone, membranophone, aerophone and cordophone. The percussion section of an orchestra most commonly contains instruments such as the timpani, snare drum, bass drum, tambourine, belonging to the membranophones, and cym ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Libretto
A libretto (Italian for "booklet") is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or Musical theatre, musical. The term ''libretto'' is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as the Mass (liturgy), Mass, requiem and sacred cantata, or the story line of a ballet. ''Libretto'' (; plural ''libretti'' ), from Italian, is the diminutive of the word ''wiktionary:libro#Italian, libro'' ("book"). Sometimes other-language equivalents are used for libretti in that language, ''livret'' for French works, ''Textbuch'' for German and ''libreto'' for Spanish. A libretto is distinct from a synopsis or scenario of the plot, in that the libretto contains all the words and stage directions, while a synopsis summarizes the plot. Some ballet historians also use the word ''libretto'' to refer to the 15 to 40 page books which were on sale to 19th century ballet audiences in Paris and contained a ve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brass Instrument
A brass instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound by sympathetic vibration of air in a tubular resonator in sympathy with the vibration of the player's lips. Brass instruments are also called labrosones or labrophones, from Latin and Greek elements meaning 'lip' and 'sound'. There are several factors involved in producing different pitches on a brass instrument. Slides, valves, crooks (though they are rarely used today), or keys are used to change vibratory length of tubing, thus changing the available harmonic series, while the player's embouchure, lip tension and air flow serve to select the specific harmonic produced from the available series. The view of most scholars (see organology) is that the term "brass instrument" should be defined by the way the sound is made, as above, and not by whether the instrument is actually made of brass. Thus one finds brass instruments made of wood, like the alphorn, the cornett, the serpent and the didgeridoo, while some ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
