11615 From Russia with love :)

Hello, everybody! My name is Elena, you may also call me Alena or Lena or Helen:) I don't know what is an italian equivalent to my name but you may use it also if any%)

In fact, I'm not connected with Italy, though I'd be happy to visit one day such cities as Florence and Venise famous for their beauty:)

I've come across this forum searching for neapolitan songtexts translation and received an immediate help. So I say thank you to [B]JC[/B] one more time:)
I like opera and classical singing and I'm always wondering what they are singing about. Also I've just started to take singing classes and I'd like to sing some songs in italian, but it's impossible to sing something when you don't know the meaning, as singing is impossible without emotions:) Also I am very puzzeled with pronontiation as I can't stand people mangling sounds of foreign language and don't want to do it myself.

I don't speak Italian at all, still I understand some words as they are very close to the French ones))) I think that Italian language and it's dialects are very beautiful and I would be glad to learn a bit))

Oufff... As for introducing myself - it may become a long story and I actually don't know what you want to hear about me:))))))) I'm a last year graduate student in mathematics) I'm Russian and I live in Rostov-on-Don, it's a big city near the Azov Sea which connects with the Black Sea.

Category
Introduce Yourself - Piacere Conoscerti

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 02/05/2009 - 07:34

A very warm welcome to The Forum Alena.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 02/05/2009 - 07:44

Ciao Alena There are a few women from Krasnodar, who live quite near me in Umbria. I think that is not too far from where you live? Welcome to the Forum and perhaps you will come to Italy one day.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 02/05/2009 - 07:58

Yeah, Noble, that's right)))) Krasnodar is very close to our city)) it takes somewhat four hours to get there by train))))

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 02/05/2009 - 08:18

Welcome to the forum, Alena, and we will love to hear more from you. It is true that, in order to sing a song you must understand what is said in the lyrics or the "feeling" will be lost. Best wishes regarding your studies.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 02/05/2009 - 13:05

[quote]
I like opera and classical singing and I'm always wondering what they are singing about. Also I've just started to take singing classes and I'd like to sing some songs in italian, but it's impossible to sing something when you don't know the meaning, as singing is impossible without emotions:) Also I am very puzzeled with pronontiation as I can't stand people mangling sounds of foreign language and don't want to do it myself.
[/quote]

The englishman Michael Maddox, who built the Petrovsky theatre in Moscow that came before the Bolshoi (Petrovsky), produced many italian operas between 1782 and 1805. These included works by Bruni, Duni, Paisiello, Cherubini, Cimarosa, Salieri, Sacchini and others. What I particularly liked was that for the Moscow stage they were translated into russian, which I hope you'll agree is a marvellous language when sung.

[URL="http://www.barnelms.com/madpetrep.html"]www.barnelms.com/madpetrep.html [/URL]

Perhaps you will have time to explore and to learn some arias from these early operas in their russian translation and also from those by Yevstigney Fomin, Dimitri Bortnyansky and Vasiliy Pashkevich? Although these were all influenced by the italian style, they still managed to maintain much of the russian character in their works.

Best of luck with all your studies anyway.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 02/05/2009 - 15:17

It is really surprising to find that the operas were translated into Russian and that they did not use a French version. It is known that Russians in those times and particularly the aristocracy and upper classes, who were the ones who used to go to the Opera, favoured French as a common language, even for everyday use. But I guess that you learn something new every day....

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 02/06/2009 - 03:09

[quote]
It is really surprising to find that the operas were translated into Russian and that they did not use a French version. It is known that Russians in those times and particularly the aristocracy and upper classes, who were the ones who used to go to the Opera, favoured French as a common language, even for everyday use. But I guess that you learn something new every day....
[/quote]

Plenty of people have misconceptions about the opera and russian society in the late 18th century, particularly in Moscow rather than St Petersburg, so you are not alone. By a curious coincidence one of the translators was called Glinka, a name usually associated with a much later period in russian opera history. I'd be interested to know from which reference books you obtained your information (by PM).
Olga Chaianova's writings from the 1920s and PN Berkov's from the 1950s have been useful references for me. There are just a very few 20th century recordings of operas in russian from this period, but all of them are worth seeking out. This one would be a good start, since it features a story from Ovid:

[url=http://www.amazon.com/Orfeo-Ed-Euridice/dp/B00005JT5C]Amazon.com: Orfeo Ed Euridice: Fomin, Keitel, European Festival Orchestra: Music[/url]

As I said, I hope that Alena will find this of interest and that she will want to find some arias to sing in russian from this period.