Word: kutuzov
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...That and the next six scenes depict, with a mixture of passion, intrigue and despair, the decadent social life of prewar Russia. The last six scenes are devoted to the French invasion of 1812. Napoleon struts nervously (to the accompaniment of diabolic fanfares in brass), while Russian Field Marshal Kutuzov praises the people and plots the invader's doom ("The beast will be wounded with all the strength of Russia"). There is little continuity in the libretto written by Prokofiev and his second wife. Prokofiev was dramatizing only a series of focal points in the story that...
Across the Black Sea, through the Dardanelles, and into the Mediterranean last week moved a big Soviet floating drydock, the second in a month. Likely destination: satellite Albania, Soviet Communism's only Mediterranean base. Last month a Soviet cruiser, the Mikhail Kutuzov, so new that it is unlisted in the 1957 edition of the authoritative Jane's Fighting Ships, passed through the Dardanelles under escort of three destroyers. Earlier, three Soviet submarines entered the Mediterranean by way of Gibraltar (and were turned over to Egypt). Russia was telling the world that Mare Nostrum means Russia...
...Prokofiev moved from personal emotion to glorification of the Russian masses, he was less successful, but nevertheless produced some fine choruses-e.g., the troops in praise of General Kutuzov, the citizens in a hymn of thanks for victory. The second part also produced the most authoritative acting-and one of the finest voices-in Baritone Kenneth Smith, who played General Kutuzov with sinewy dignity. High point of the opera came in one of the closing scenes, in which Andrey and Natasha were reunited as Andrey lay on his deathbed. Through his delirium he hears a pulsing beat, played...
...talent, and he demonstrates just how much of an art an actor, naturally trained to move smoothly, can make of moving without grace. The least satisfactory of the starring trio is Mel Ferrer, who displays more stiffness than grandeur. As portrayed by Oscar Homolka, the Russian commander, General Kutuzov, has considerably more moral force, particularly in a scene where he thanks God for the delivery of his country from danger after Napoleon withdraws from Moscow...
...maxims (sample: "Where there is aw there is injustice") and then dies; he Machiavellian Prince Vassily (Tullio Jarminati) scarcely gets out of the wings, and the two men struggling for possession of Holy Russia, Kutuzov (Oscar Homolka) and Napoleon (Herbert Lorn), are seen simply as eccentrics-the one, an untidy, drowsy general; the other, a preening peacock who imagines he is an :agle...