Word: bolshoi
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Stevens fished and hunted in the country near Moscow, drank gallons of vodka with casual acquaintances in bars, restaurants and railway compartments, observed the healthy good looks of Russian women, admired the drama at the Moscow Art Theater and the ballet at the Bolshoi, gave freely to beggars, noted the remnants of deep religious faith. In the end, he came to the conclusion that the Russians are a good, warmhearted, admirable people who "deserve much better than they receive." When he left, realizing his chances were slight of ever seeing Russia again, "a sort of sadness and depression . . . settled over...
When Alfred Hall was a proper, young cipher clerk at the British embassy in Moscow, he did a somewhat improper thing: he picked up a Russian girl at a performance of Swan Lake in the Bolshoi. "I brushed up against her," he said. "I apologized. We started talking. She spoke good, if academic, English and there it was." Two months later, Alf Hall and 22-year-old Clara Strumina, student of English (mostly Shakespeare) at the University of Moscow, and daughter of a late army colonel, were married...
...Bolshoi Theater in Sverdlov Square that evening, the great red and gold curtain rang up on a new opera called The Decembrists, a propaganda piece about a rising of military officers in 1825, at the outset of Czar Nicholas I's reign. The Soviet Union's finest vocalists were on the stage, but opera was not the evening's sensation. Glancing towards the great state box, which dominates the glittering dress circle of the Bolshoi, the audience saw that it was impressively occupied. Sitting there, impassive, iron-mouthed, unsmiling, were the supreme leaders of the Soviet Union...
...unannounced appearance of the Soviet leaders at the Bolshoi was one of their rare public demonstrations of solidarity since the death of Stalin. Counting the heads, the audience found one missing; the cruel, slyly epicene face of Lavrenty Beria, first deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers, chief of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (police), boss of atomic energy, was not among those in the state box. Next morning, Moscow newspapers reported the visit of the great to the Bolshoi and carefully listed the twelve leaders present. The name of Beria was not mentioned; there was no explanation...
Rimsky-Korsakov: May Night (Soloists, Chorus and Orchestra of the Bolshoi Opera, conducted by Vassily Nebolsin; Vanguard, 3 LPs). For opera lovers looking for a new but basically old-fashioned work. The plot, derived from Gogol stories, is full of romantic love and farcical confusion, but has a happy ending...