The Prince and the Pauper

No matter where fate throws you, no matter how hard you have it, you have no right to give up on your goal or betray yourself. Only after drinking your cup to the dregs and learning everything that fell to your lot will you be able to tell yourself: “I understood something in this life...” The play “The Prince and the Pauper” at the MHAT by Sergey Mikhalkov, a laureate of the Lenin Prize, ends with a song about it—an old performance for adults and children with music and dances based on Mark Twain, a stage version, an intermezzo, and song lyrics by Lesya Tanyuk, who put on this performance. The play has the color of spectacle staged by actors of an old traveling London troupe of the Elizabethan era. It was designed by artist Boris Messerer; the music was written by composer Mikhail Bolotin. The songs have a mischievous quickness of rhythm, a cleverly devised arrangement; the composer knows perfectly both the melody of the era in which the conditional “Prince and the Pauper” takes place, and modern musical texture. Thus, the performance uses the sound of old English folk instruments—horns, small bells, bagpipes, specific percussion, and more.