http://www.music.princeton.edu/boris/index.html
From April 12-14, 2007, the Berlind Theater at Princeton University will
stage a world premiere of Pushkin's 1825 play Boris Godunov in an
authoritative new translation by Antony Wood. The staging will feature
choral and orchestral music that Sergei Prokofiev composed in 1936 for the
innovative theater director Vsevolod Meyerhold, whose efforts to stage the
play in Stalin's Russia went to waste.
The 2007 premiere, an international collaboration between Princeton
University and the Glinka Museum of Musical Culture in Moscow, will involve
students in the Program in Theater and Dance, the Princeton University
Orchestra, the Princeton University Chamber Chorus, and the School of
Architecture. The four performances will be preceded by an international
symposium involving Pushkin, Prokofiev, and Russian theater scholars.
Firestone Library will curate an exhibit devoted to the project
(http://libweb.princeton.edu/libraries/music/boris/index.htm), and the
Slavic Department will offer an upper-level undergraduate course called
"Pushkin, Prokofiev, Meyerhold: Boris Godunov on the Twentieth-Century
Stage." The creative team hopes to involve as many members of the University
community as possible in this special event.
On April 13, a one-day scholarly colloquium is being planned on the
Princeton campus to accompany this world premiere. It is preceded by a
keynote address on Thursday, April 12, by Leonid Maximenkov, on Meyerhold,
Eisenstein, and art of the Stalinist 1930s.
On Saturday, April 14, 9:00 a.m. - 12 noon, a conference session, conducted
in Russian, will take place for the benefit of our guests from Moscow and
St. Petersburg (and all interested Russian-speaking parties).
The Friday Symposium, in English and open to the public, will consist of one
lecture and three discussion panels with brief presentations and commentary:
one each on Meyerhold's theatre, Pushkin's drama, and Prokofiev's music.
Possible topics include the fate of modernist theatre during the Stalin
years; the Pushkin Jubilee in 1937 and the strange burdens Russia's greatest
poet had to bear while being canonized; the Prokofiev-Meyerhold
collaboration (both on this project and in general); the challenge of
Prokofiev's music as a part of a new concept of musicalized drama; technical
problems of translation, orchestration, set design, and choreography; and
the recurring motif of a Russian "Time of Trouble."
The following schedule reflects invited and confirmed guests as of February
2007:
April 12, 4:00:
Leonid Maximenkov (keynote address)
Opening of Firestone Library Exhibit on Meyerhold, Prokofiev, Pushkin
April 13: Symposium (9:00 a.m. - 5:30 p.m., Betts Auditorium, School of
Architecture)
PANEL 1. 20th c. -Russian modernist theatre and set design
Tim Vasen, Boris Wolfson, Devin Fore
Chester Dunning (with brief postscript by Caryl Emerson):
"Boris Godunov in History and the History of Pushkin's Boris Godunov"
PANEL 2. Pushkin as dramatist
Antony Wood, Stephanie Sandler, Douglas Clayton, Michael Wachtel
PANEL 3. Prokofiev's music
Nelly Kravetz (Tel Aviv University), Stephen Press (Illinois Wesleyan
University), Marina Frolova-Walker (Cambridge University)
April 14: Russian-Language Session (9:00 a.m. - 12:00 noon)
Nelly Kravetz (Tel Aviv University), Moderator
Irina Medvedeva (Glinka Museum)
Galina Zlobina (Russian State Archive of Literature and Art)
Natalia Makerova (Meyerhold Museum)
Leonid Maximenkov (Independent Scholar)
April 14: Russian-Language Session (9:00 a.m. - 12:00 noon)
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