1.
Passepied
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The passepied is a French court dance. In English the passepied has been called paspy, an approximation of the French pronunciation. The earliest historical mention of the passepied was by Noël du Fail in 1548, françois Rabelais and Thoinot Arbeau, writing later in the 16th century, identify the dance as a type of branle characteristic of Brittany. At this time it was a fast duple-time dance with three-bar phrases, like many folk-dances it was popular at the court of Louis XIV. The passepied was remodelled by Jean-Baptiste Lully as a concert dance. It is accounted the fastest of the dances of the time, usually with a time signature of 38. Its phrasing had to divide into four measures to accommodate the four characteristic tiny steps over two measures and it used the steps of the minuet, which Lully had long before similarly adapted, to quite different effect, moving lightly and tracing elaborate patterns upon the floor. After this the passepied appeared in a great many theatrical productions and it is found as late as 1774 in Christoph Willibald Glucks Iphegenia in Aulis. Writing in 1739 Johann Mattheson described the passepied as a fast dance, with a character approaching frivolity, for which reason it lacks the eagerness, anger, italians often used it as a finale for instrumental sinfonie. Passepieds occasionally appear in such as J. S. 1, or dramatic music such as his Overture in the French Style for harpsichord. There are often two Passepieds in minor and major keys to be played in the order I, II, I, or else passepieds occur in contrasting pairs, léo Delibes wrote a passepied as part of his incidental music for the play Le roi samuse by Victor Hugo. A more modern example is the fourth and final movement of Claude Debussys Suite bergamasque for piano, an even more modern example is found in the third movement of Igor Stravinskys Symphony in C, which consists of a minuet, passepied, and fugue. Slightly more modern still is the number in act 2 of Sergei Prokofievs ballet Cinderella. Quite decidedly more modern is the first of five dances in the movement, Révérences engrenées, premier pentacle. A still yet more modern instance is the movement of Christopher Rouses orchestral ballet Friandises. An even more extremely modern passepied occurs as the movement of the Garden of the Senses Suite in part 2 of Michael Gandolfis The Garden of Cosmic Speculation. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie, Dance and the Music of J. S
2.
French language
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French is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages, French has evolved from Gallo-Romance, the spoken Latin in Gaul, and more specifically in Northern Gaul. Its closest relatives are the other langues doïl—languages historically spoken in northern France and in southern Belgium, French was also influenced by native Celtic languages of Northern Roman Gaul like Gallia Belgica and by the Frankish language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders. Today, owing to Frances past overseas expansion, there are numerous French-based creole languages, a French-speaking person or nation may be referred to as Francophone in both English and French. French is a language in 29 countries, most of which are members of la francophonie. As of 2015, 40% of the population is in Europe, 35% in sub-Saharan Africa, 15% in North Africa and the Middle East, 8% in the Americas. French is the fourth-most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union, 1/5 of Europeans who do not have French as a mother tongue speak French as a second language. As a result of French and Belgian colonialism from the 17th and 18th century onward, French was introduced to new territories in the Americas, Africa, most second-language speakers reside in Francophone Africa, in particular Gabon, Algeria, Mauritius, Senegal and Ivory Coast. In 2015, French was estimated to have 77 to 110 million native speakers, approximately 274 million people are able to speak the language. The Organisation internationale de la Francophonie estimates 700 million by 2050, in 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked French the third most useful language for business, after English and Standard Mandarin Chinese. Under the Constitution of France, French has been the language of the Republic since 1992. France mandates the use of French in official government publications, public education except in specific cases, French is one of the four official languages of Switzerland and is spoken in the western part of Switzerland called Romandie, of which Geneva is the largest city. French is the language of about 23% of the Swiss population. French is also a language of Luxembourg, Monaco, and Aosta Valley, while French dialects remain spoken by minorities on the Channel Islands. A plurality of the worlds French-speaking population lives in Africa and this number does not include the people living in non-Francophone African countries who have learned French as a foreign language. Due to the rise of French in Africa, the total French-speaking population worldwide is expected to reach 700 million people in 2050, French is the fastest growing language on the continent. French is mostly a language in Africa, but it has become a first language in some urban areas, such as the region of Abidjan, Ivory Coast and in Libreville. There is not a single African French, but multiple forms that diverged through contact with various indigenous African languages, sub-Saharan Africa is the region where the French language is most likely to expand, because of the expansion of education and rapid population growth
3.
Russian language
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Russian is an East Slavic language and an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and many minor or unrecognised territories. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages, written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century and beyond. It is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages and it is also the largest native language in Europe, with 144 million native speakers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Russian is the eighth most spoken language in the world by number of native speakers, the language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Russian is also the second most widespread language on the Internet after English, Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without, the so-called soft and hard sounds. This distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language, another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels. Russian is a Slavic language of the Indo-European family and it is a lineal descendant of the language used in Kievan Rus. From the point of view of the language, its closest relatives are Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect, although vanished during the 15th or 16th century, is considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. In the 19th century, the language was often called Great Russian to distinguish it from Belarusian, then called White Russian and Ukrainian, however, the East Slavic forms have tended to be used exclusively in the various dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In some cases, both the East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use, with different meanings. For details, see Russian phonology and History of the Russian language and it is also regarded by the United States Intelligence Community as a hard target language, due to both its difficulty to master for English speakers and its critical role in American world policy. The standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language, mikhail Lomonosov first compiled a normalizing grammar book in 1755, in 1783 the Russian Academys first explanatory Russian dictionary appeared. By the mid-20th century, such dialects were forced out with the introduction of the education system that was established by the Soviet government. Despite the formalization of Standard Russian, some nonstandard dialectal features are observed in colloquial speech. Thus, the Russian language is the 6th largest in the world by number of speakers, after English, Mandarin, Hindi/Urdu, Spanish, Russian is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian is still a choice for both Russian as a second language and native speakers in Russia as well as many of the former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics, samuel P. Huntington wrote in the Clash of Civilizations, During the heyday of the Soviet Union, Russian was the lingua franca from Prague to Hanoi
4.
Ballet
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Ballet /ˈbæleɪ/ is a type of performance dance that originated in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread, highly technical form of dance with its own based on French terminology. It has been influential and has defined the foundational techniques used in many other dance genres. Becoming a ballet dancer requires years of training, Ballet has been taught in various schools around the world, which have historically incorporated their own cultures to evolve the art. Ballet may also refer to a dance work, which consists of the choreography. A well-known example of this is The Nutcracker, a ballet that was originally choreographed by Marius Petipa. Ballets are choreographed and performed by trained artists, the word came into English usage from the French around 1630. Ballet originated in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th and 16th centuries before being spread from Italy to France by an Italian aristocrat, Catherine de Medici, in France, ballet developed even further under her aristocratic influence. The dancers in these early court ballets were mostly noble amateurs, Ballets in this period were lengthy and elaborate and often served a political purpose. Ornamented costumes were meant to impress viewers and restricted freedom of movement. The ballets were performed in large chambers with viewers on three sides, French court ballet reached its height under the reign of King Louis XIV. Known as the Sun King, Louis symbolized the brilliance of France, in 1661 Louis founded the Académie Royale de Danse to establish standards and certify dance instructors. In 1672, Louis XIV made Jean-Baptiste Lully the director of the Académie Royale de Musique from which the first professional ballet company, Lully is considered the most important composer of music for ballets de cour and instrumental to the development of the form. Ballet went into decline in France after 1830, though it continued to develop in Denmark, Italy, the arrival in Europe on the eve of First World War of the Ballets Russes of Sergei Diaghilev, revived interest in the ballet and started the modern era. The Russian choreographer Michel Fokine challenged tradition and called for reforms that reinvigorated ballet as an art form, in the 20th century, ballet had a wide influence on other dance genres, and subgenres of ballet have also evolved. In the United States, choreographer George Balanchine developed what is now known as neoclassical ballet, other developments include contemporary ballet and post-structural ballet. Also in the century, ballet took a turn dividing it from classical ballet to the introduction of modern dance. Stylistic variations have emerged and evolved since the Italian Renaissance, early, classical variations are primarily associated with geographic origin
5.
Yuri Khanon
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Yuri Khanon is a pen name of Yuri Feliksovich Soloviev-Savoyarov, a Russian composer. Prior to 1993, he wrote under a pen name Yuri Khanin, Khanon was born on June 16,1965 in Leningrad. In 1988 he became a laureate of the European Film Awards, and in 1989 he won “Nika”, a Russian cinematographic award. Due to his numerous concerts throughout Russia as well as to TV and cinema appearances Khanon reached the peak of his popularity in 1988-1992, in 1988, in spite of an opposition of his old-fashioned professors, Yuri Khanon managed to graduate from the Leningrad Conservatory, specializing in composition. He named Erik Satie and Alexander Skryabin as his teachers and predecessors, worshipping their ideology, Yuri Khanon is not just a composer, he is also a writer, a philosopher, a painter, a studio pianist, and a botanist-selectionist. Khanon is author of libretto and texts of almost all his works and his grandfather was Mikhail Savoyarov, a comic actor and composer, who was very famous in St. Petersburg on the eve of the Revolution of 1917. During this period he composed soundtracks to three films, gave concerts, had several appearances on TV and published a series of articles. Many of his performances yielded public scandals, especially his concerts “Music of Dogs” and “Dried Embryos”, in 1992 produced CD Olympia, symphonic works of Khanon, Five smallest orgasms, A Certain Concert for piano and orchestra and Middle Symphony. Five Smallest orgasms, oc.29 were written as a response to Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy. The theme of deception is one of the features of Khanin’s creations. “Middle Symphony”, oc.40, with a text by the composer, is a large, quite extraordinary work with a rather unnatural and it ends with a canon in which the three singers sing the same text backwards for 81 bars. The text is very abstruse, in fact almost absurd, it necessary to overturn one’s impression of the whole symphony just listened to… Does this discussion exhaust the subject of this disc. I don’t know – I doubt it, after 1992 Khanon ceased his public and TV appearances, as well as interviews and concerts, and stopped publishing his music works. Instead he decided, in his own words, “. to work, Khanon never participated in any professional organizations and is notable for his independent ideas and reclusive way of life. Beyond all doubts, Yuri Khanon came into the history of music as “the most closed, metaphorically speaking, he stormed out and started a life of a recluse, thus having declared, “I’m done. You’d better think I exist no more. ”And we, his contemporaries, have nothing to respond, as a concert number “The Middle Duo” is performed around the world by almost all soloists of Russian ballet, though for 10 years Khanon’s music has been used without his permission. From the very beginning of his career Khanon deliberately evaded calling himself a composer, creative work is the least important for him, because, according to his ideas, there’s more than enough composers and artists in our world. “It’s impossible to walk down the street without bumping into just another writer or composer, ” – Khanon ironically wrote in one of his articles in 1993
6.
La Peau de chagrin
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La Peau de chagrin is an 1831 novel by French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac. Set in early 19th-century Paris, it tells the story of a man who finds a magic piece of shagreen that fulfills his every desire. For each wish granted, however, the skin shrinks and consumes a portion of his physical energy, La Peau de chagrin belongs to the Études philosophiques group of Balzacs sequence of novels, La Comédie humaine. Before the book was completed, Balzac created excitement about it by publishing a series of articles, although he was five months late in delivering the manuscript, he succeeded in generating sufficient interest that the novel sold out instantly upon its publication. A second edition, which included a series of other philosophical tales, was released one month later. Although the novel uses fantastic elements, its focus is a realistic portrayal of the excesses of bourgeois materialism. Balzacs renowned attention to detail is used to describe a house, an antique shop, a royal banquet. He also includes details from his own life as a struggling writer, the central theme of La Peau de chagrin is the conflict between desire and longevity. The magic skin represents the owners life-force, which is depleted through every expression of will, ignoring a caution from the shopkeeper who offers him the skin, the protagonist greedily surrounds himself with wealth, only to find himself miserable and decrepit at the storys end. La Peau de chagrin firmly established Balzac as a writer of significance in France and his social circle widened significantly, and he was sought eagerly by publishers for future projects. The book served as the catalyst for a series of letters he exchanged with a Polish baroness named Ewelina Hańska and it also inspired Giselher Klebes opera Die tödlichen Wünsche. In 1830 Honoré de Balzac had only begun to achieve recognition as a writer, although his parents had persuaded him to make his profession the law, he announced in 1819 that he wanted to become an author. After moving into a room near the Bibliothèque de lArsenal in Paris, Balzac wrote for one year. Frustrated, he moved back to his family in the suburb of Villeparisis and he spent the next several years writing simple potboiler novels, which he published under a variety of pseudonyms. He shared some of his income from these with his parents and he published for the first time under his own name in 1829. Les Chouans, a novel about royalist forces in Brittany, did not succeed commercially and he achieved a major success later the same year when he published La Physiologie du mariage, a treatise on the institution of marriage. Bolstered by its popularity, he added to his fame by publishing a variety of stories and essays in the magazines Revue de Paris, La Caricature. He thus made connections in the industry that later helped him to obtain reviews of his novels
7.
Mikhailovsky Theatre
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The Mikhailovsky Theatre is one of Russias oldest opera and ballet houses. It was founded in 1833 and is situated in a building on the Arts Square in St. Petersburg. It is named after Grand Duke Michael Pavlovich of Russia, the theatre was established in 1833 by decree of Tsar Nicholas I. Before the 1917 Revolution, the Mikhailovsky did not have its own resident company, performances were given either by a French company, hired by the Russian Imperial Theatres or at the end of the century by the Mariinsky Theatre and Alexandrinsky Theatre companies. Both classical and contemporary authors and composers had their works produced to great acclaim in French, when the Bolsheviks took power, the French company was forced to leave Russia. In 1917 the Mikhailovsky Theatre was closed, on March 6,1918 the theatre was reopened as an opera theatre. Shortly afterwards the Mikhailovsky started changing its names, in 1918-1920, it was called the Ex-Mikhailovsky Theatre. In 1920 it was renamed to the State Academic Comic Opera Theatre, in 1926 it got the name of the Leningrad State Academic Maly Opera Theatre, MALEGOT for short. In 1920-1930 the Maly Operny established itself as one of the experimental stages in Russian new musical theatre. In 1930s Russian choreographer Fyodor Lopukhov founded the company of the theatre. The first ballet premiere, Harlequinade, choreographed by Lopukhov, took place on June 6,1933, from 1989 to 2007 the theatre bore the name of Modest Mussorgsky, subsequently returning to its original name the Mikhailovsky Theatre. In what was seen as a move, in 2007 the Russian businessman Vladimir Kekhman was appointed as General Director of the Theatre. In 2007, Obraztsova was appointed director of the Mikhailovsky Opera. However Obraztsova resigned in 2008, and Ruzimatov - in 2009, from 2009 both Obraztsova and Ruzimatov held a seat on the Artistic Committee of the theatre, while Peter Feranec was the theatres music director in 2009 -2011. Mikhail Messerer is currently ballet master in chief of the Mikhailovsky Theatre, from 2012 till present time Mikhail Tatarnikov is the theatre’s music director. In 2011 -2013 Nacho Duato held the position of the Mikhailovsky Ballets artistic director, several of Duato ballets received their world premieres at the theatre, including Nunc Dimittis, Prelude, The Sleeping Beauty, Invisible. In 2009 -2015, Mikhail Messerer staged for the Mikhailovsky numerous ballets, including Swan Lake, Don Quixote, The Flames of Paris, Laurencia, Le Corsaire, Class Concert. The Ballet Company of the Mikhailovsky Theatre made its London debut in July 2008 on the London Coliseum stage arranged by the British ex-dancer Gavin Roebuck
8.
Saint Petersburg
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Saint Petersburg is Russias second-largest city after Moscow, with five million inhabitants in 2012, and an important Russian port on the Baltic Sea. It is politically incorporated as a federal subject, situated on the Neva River, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea, it was founded by Tsar Peter the Great on May 271703. In 1914, the name was changed from Saint Petersburg to Petrograd, in 1924 to Leningrad, between 1713 and 1728 and 1732–1918, Saint Petersburg was the capital of imperial Russia. In 1918, the government bodies moved to Moscow. Saint Petersburg is one of the cities of Russia, as well as its cultural capital. The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Saint Petersburg is home to The Hermitage, one of the largest art museums in the world. A large number of consulates, international corporations, banks. Swedish colonists built Nyenskans, a fortress, at the mouth of the Neva River in 1611, in a then called Ingermanland. A small town called Nyen grew up around it, Peter the Great was interested in seafaring and maritime affairs, and he intended to have Russia gain a seaport in order to be able to trade with other maritime nations. He needed a better seaport than Arkhangelsk, which was on the White Sea to the north, on May 1703121703, during the Great Northern War, Peter the Great captured Nyenskans, and soon replaced the fortress. On May 271703, closer to the estuary 5 km inland from the gulf), on Zayachy Island, he laid down the Peter and Paul Fortress, which became the first brick and stone building of the new city. The city was built by conscripted peasants from all over Russia, tens of thousands of serfs died building the city. Later, the city became the centre of the Saint Petersburg Governorate, Peter moved the capital from Moscow to Saint Petersburg in 1712,9 years before the Treaty of Nystad of 1721 ended the war, he referred to Saint Petersburg as the capital as early as 1704. During its first few years, the city developed around Trinity Square on the bank of the Neva, near the Peter. However, Saint Petersburg soon started to be built out according to a plan, by 1716 the Swiss Italian Domenico Trezzini had elaborated a project whereby the city centre would be located on Vasilyevsky Island and shaped by a rectangular grid of canals. The project was not completed, but is evident in the layout of the streets, in 1716, Peter the Great appointed French Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond as the chief architect of Saint Petersburg. In 1724 the Academy of Sciences, University and Academic Gymnasium were established in Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great, in 1725, Peter died at the age of fifty-two. His endeavours to modernize Russia had met opposition from the Russian nobility—resulting in several attempts on his life
