Word: kiev
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Sleeping Beauty. Russlan, based on a Pushkin poem, begins in the palace of the Prince of Kiev, where the wedding of the knight Russlan and the princess Ludmilla is about to be celebrated. In a pouf of smoke, Ludmilla is abducted by the wicked dwarf Tchernomor. The rest of the opera concerns Russlan's travails in trying to find her ahead of two other suitors; the prince has promised Ludmilla to the first man who can rescue her. A kind of Russian Siegfried, Russlan receives a magic sword from that singing head but in the end requires a magic...
...enraptured or inspiring as it might have. Of course, the brass in the familiar opening "Promenade" and "Gnomus" effectively blurted out the image of the exhibition and the composer's ambling from picture to picture. But until near the final "Hut on Fowl's Leg" and "Great Gate of Kiev," the performance seemed a bit weighted down and torpid in parts. The quick changes of mood in the "Promenades," with the horn, winds and violins heralding a new picture, were well enough evoked. But in certain spots, such as the high-pitched "Il Vecchio Castello," the Orchestra seemed tame...
...full orchestra renewed in vigor in the final two images, conveying nicely the alternately sprightly and solemn tones and then rushingimpressively into "The Great Gate of Kiev," the famous climax. The gate itself was designed to commemorate the Czar's escape from an 1866 bombing, and was ornately depicted in the exhibition painting; hence the bells, gong, pounding drums and full orchestra which close the work in thrilling fashion. The orchestra, although seeming now a bit too fast in parts, ended the work with a befiting clamor of vying instruments, sounding like a celebration and evoking the patent majesty...
...also raided the apartment of Mykola Rudenko, head of the Helsinki group's Kiev chapter. The agents trashed the contents of Rudenko's flat and stripped his wife naked to humiliate her. Rudenko and Oleska Tykhy, a committee member from the city of Donetsk, were then hauled off to Ukrainian prisons...
Besides, the Russians know how to cope with cold. Moscow, Kiev, Leningrad and other major cities all have superefficient subway systems, as well as good if overcrowded bus and streetcar service. The use of private cars is so limited that there are no traffic jams or parking problems. In any case, the streets are swept bone-dry by thousands of snowplows. Giant "snow eater" machines called snegouborki scoop up the snow and dump it onto conveyor belts, which deposit it in trucks, which unload it into the Moskva River. As the first flakes fall, at any hour...