Word: dantchenko
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...health of lyric drama everywhere that I have undertaken to produce the Musical Studio of the Moscow Art Theatre," explained Morris Gest in a recent interview with a CRIMSON reporter. "Without some such stimulus as Dantchenko and his synthetic theatre are providing, the lyric drama would, I believe, drop to even lower levels than it has now reached and I doubt if ever before the public interest in opera has been much lower...
With a setting which represented plastically, with various unexpected levels and slopes, a Spanish interior the like of which has yet to be seen in Spain, the Nemirovitch-Dantchenko Moscow opera troupe (TIME, Jan. 11) presented last week their version of Mérimée's Carmen with a totally new Russian libretto and a totally new arrangement of the Bizet score...
...again evident that M. Nemirovitch-Dantchenko's "singing actors" act much better than they sing. From a purely auditory viewpoint the performance was scarcely more than worth attending. The eye, however, was caught, held and delighted by the perfect ensemble pantomime of the chorus, which lolled and sat about at various levels throughout most of the production, and provided a sort of "visual accompaniment" to the action which centred about the main characters...
...Olga Baklanova, as the far from impeccable Perichole, was in better voice than when she sang the role of the still less irreproachable Lysistrata, and managed to interpret tellingly M. Dantchenko's conception of La Perichole as a child who grows up into a woman through the stress of passion, instead of clinging to the convention which would reduce her to the level of a cheerful strolling band which happened to attract the Viceroy from Madrid...
...Daughter of Madame Angot, on the other hand, was pitched in a wholly vivacious and amusing key. It was the first production attempted by the Musical Studio, and in consequence the original French libretto and the famed Lecocq score showed not a trace of M. Dantchenko's later, bolder and almost slashing adaptations in the name of synthesis. The complete versatility of his troupe was proved by the fact that all but one of the leading roles of the piece were played in Manhattan by "singing actors" who had had only minor parts in Lysistrata and La Perichole...