The Man-Theatre. Selected Works

10 hrs. 16 min.

Audio Plays, Radio Productions & Literary Readings

Language Russian

Author Irakly Andronikov

Narrator Irakly Andronikov

Description

Disc 1.
"Borodino"
"From the Life of Ostuzhev" ("The Throat of Fyodor Shalyapin" and "Solvini’s Mistake")
Running time—1 hour 47 min.
"…Thanks to his talent for storytelling, Andronikov gets onto the stage. Though it takes titanic effort. He is pathologically shy. To get rid of his shyness, he even turned to a hypnotist. The hypnotist held several sessions with him—everything was in vain. The stiffness disappeared on its own once Andronikov managed to step into the image of another person: begin speaking and acting in his name…"

Disc 2.
"Odoevsky Album" (a story about the last year of Lermontov’s life)
"Lermontov’s Lyrics"

Disc 3.
"The Tagil Find"
"Oral Stories"
Running time—1 hour 34 min.

From childhood, Irakly Andronikov had a passion for portraying and telling stories. But who would have thought that the master of oral art, recognized now, once spoke in a disconnected, rambling, senseless, frightened way—and at the same time, he was the one who laughed first? And now listeners are captivated by Andronikov’s ability to poetically, with vivid shades, not only tell a story, but also convey the importance of the facts contained in it. A vivid example is “The Tagil Find”—the story of letters from the Karamzin family, who were firmly friends with A. S. Pushkin.

Disc 4.
"Vasiliy Kachalov visiting Alexey Tolstoy"
"First Time on the Stage"

Disc 5.
"The Riddle of N. F. I."
"The Boundaries of the Beautiful"
Running time—1 hour 43 min.
"‘For my part,’ Irakly Andronikov says, ‘I was given a most unusually complicated yet at the same time extraordinarily fascinating task.’
The 17-year-old Mikhail Lermontov dedicated a series of poems to a wonderful girl whose initials were N. F. I.
For many years, the answer couldn’t be found—who was she, the mysterious beloved of the poet? Andronikov’s “Lermontov specialist” couldn’t pass up this riddle…"

Disc 6.
"Fyodor Shalyapin Sings"
"Fourteen Russian Troikas"
Running time—1 hour 45 min.

Surprisingly, in our age of cars, aircraft, and spacecraft—when even a troika no longer surprises anyone with its speed—songs about the troika still amaze and delight, and make you think, and sometimes even feel sad. Well, that’s poetry’s property—truth is always modern, because in songs about the troika the national Russian character has poured out; the soul of the people appears, all the heat, all the breadth of their feelings. And even though that life is gone, there are no troikas, there are no coachmen, no passing ensigns—still, the troika song lives and rings over the world and, as Gogol put it, “curls up around the heart.”