Compositore

V.I. Martynov

Scenografia e costumi

preparati nei laboratori del

LE LAMENTAZIONI
DI GEREMIA

 

Il libro delle

Lamentazioni di

Geremia

trasposto in canto

Scenografia e messinscena

A.V. Vassil'ev

Regista

N. Cindjaikin

Scenografo

I.Popov

Ensemble di musica sacra

anticorussa

"Sirin"

Diretto da

A. Kotov

Cantanti

I. Bajgulova

O. Bajgulova

S. Barannikov

V. Georgievskaja

O. Eliseev

R. Kostrykin

P. Kunič

A. Sagajdak

A. Skundina

M. Šentalinskaja

E. Amirbekjan

G. Guseva

M. Stepanič

I. Mišenkova

teatro

"Scuola d'arte drammatica"

 

Direttore tecnico

A.Narazov

 

Macchinisti di scena

N. Antonov

S. Koroteev

V. Nazarov

 

Costumi

S. Zabavnikova

 

Aiuto costumisti

V. Andreev

I. Zajceva

 

Luci

I.Daničev

 

Direttore artistico del Teatro

A.V. Vassil'ev

 

 

 

Il teatro "Scuola d'arte drammatica" ringrazia il direttore artistico dell' "Accademia di musica antica" TatjanaGrindenko per la collaborazione

 

                                                                             

Il vestito a brandelli

 

The origin of this story goes back to the summer 1975. After having finished my second cycle of studies (unlike the first, the second were artistic studies), I decided to test myself in another profession. I took a camera and a box of twenty negatives and set off on an expedition to the north with a group of ethnologists from Moscow University. I started (or perhaps continued) another life with Meten's ancient folk songs. I really, proceeded as some years prior to this journey I had written some music to Marina Cvetaeva's verses in a style that I then perceived intuitively, but that in practice unfortunately remained only a dream... "If destiny had united us" was the beginning of the first song; I am still surprised by the existence of the notes on the stave, of their later arrangement (not my work) and lastly the by recording made by symphonic orchestra. I remember the days of my friendship with Dimitrij Pokrovskij and my affection for his group, the rehearsals of Boris Godunov at the Taganka Theatre..., all of this happened many years ago when I met the soloist of the group, Andrei Kotov. I remember the christening in the Vagankov cemetery church; I was christened thanks to Nikita Kjubimov, when I was at the same age as general Gremin in the eight chapter of Evgenji Onegin. At that time I still did not know if I had been lucky, I found out later, I forgot and found out again, and my years in the theatre passed in this way, until the will of the Supreme Being made Joseph and his brothers come my way. Spring arrived, perhaps it was 1991. The demonstration of the scenes taken from the novel lasted all night long, we read the Old Testament and sang the Vespers chants. In the morning we exited through the open door of the Uran cinema. Easter was far off, but the air was warm, the snow was melting slowly and Easter seemed to have arrived. I suffered greatly when Joseph fell into the ditch, during the tragic days when the performance (the first performance had just been staged in the small village Toga in Japan) was ripped apart. Those days coincided with the second coup d'état in October, and in an instant Joseph disappeared taking with him my Soviet past and the company educated in five years' work, and a different, not educated, theatre. "My clothes" shouted Joseph and implored with terror "Don't tear them". Yes, they tore them, they ripped the mother's clothes to shreds, the clothes that also belonged to the son." This is how I lost Joseph and his bothers... and I was left with the Lamentions. I asked Andrei Kotov to start rehearsing the Lamentations, already with the intention to perform it in a well defined artistic form on the stage of the Drama School, I was not in a hurry to face the scenography because I was confident that a scenographic image would come to me at a later date. The overall picture of how the Lamentations had to be came to me when I was finishing our meetings with Terechek Mari for "Le rêve du tonton" in Budapest. Our life is accidental and devoid of sense with respect to God. I shall not speech about many facts that have happened so far, I shall limit myself to describing a pilgrimage I made in August 1994 to Mount Athos for the feast of Assumption Day. I remained standing in the Temple of Iver's Icon from five p.m. to ten a.m. the following morning, as dictated by the Byzantine ritual, from the festive Te Deum in honour of Iver's Icon that was solemnly carried into the Cathedral to halfway through the following day, when I felt within me all that would happen afterwards: I knew that Lamentations would be as they really are now. Nonetheless, I cannot say certainty that the story of Lamentations is finished.

 

 

Lamentazioni anticorusse

 

It is a composition taken from the Old Testament that Vassil'ev staged at his theatre in Moscow during the International Cechov Festival. No words are spoken, biblical verses are chanted admirably by the Choir of Ancient Spiritual Music to the notes of music composed by Martynov in the simple, but beautiful, scenario designed by Igor Popov. This mis-en-scène produced very strong emotions in the audience enshrouded in this austere, but melodious spiritual atmosphere. Here are some of Martynov's notes on the performance. The idea of writing an orthodox para or extraliturgical work based. on one of the most important and unitarian biblical texts came to me in 1990-91 after the successful staging of the Apocalypse in Germany The Sirin choir was established in that period. Its members had discovered an original style combining ancient Russian liturgical chants with traditional folkloristic songs. It was a radically novel attempt, not a restoration, to give new life to ancient Russian chants, in fact their work did not give the idea of something out of a museum, but of something new and modem. I have written a great deal for church choirs and I have revived old Russian liturgical chants in various monasteries. But when I heard the singers of Sirin choir for the first time I realised that it alone was capable of not only restoring the ancient liturgical chants, but also of arranging an original ancient and modem composition that was based on the old structure, but did not solely reproduce it. This is why Jeremiah's Lamentations were composed specifically for Sirin, or rather they were created together with this choir and tried out during the course of composition. The opera was composed in various stages: often the completed part was experimented during the rehearsal and the score corrected only afterward. I really feel that no choir other than Sirin could sing the Lamentations.
The first performance of Jeremiah's lamentations took place in 1992 during the avantguard festival Alternativa. We did not have the prologue, the second part and the fifth chapter at that date, but it was the first time they were sung in front of an audience. Other concerts followed. The Lamentations were staged in their entirety for the first time in 1993 during the "December evenings" organised at the A.S. Puskin Museum of Figurative Art. - Why did you choose the text of Jeremiah's Lamentations for your work?
I feel that the present day world reveals itself to us a heap of debris in ail fields - ecology, morals, aesthetics, art. The Jerusalem, destroyed and lamented by the prophet Jeremiah in his Lamentations, represents a historical situation presenting analogous conditions to the ones our world in is today. His lament not only expresses desperation and the sense of ineluctability, it is also a prayer, the realisation of the betrayal against the superior reality, the betrayal that provokes the destruction of Jerusalem and the world. This is why the sole real constructive action can be the ritual repetition of the prophet's lamentations. Only after weeping our own penance with repentance can we hope to achieve the rebuilding, sooner or later of the world that we have destroyed.

 

 

 

RETOURNS