More Roerich Stage Sets Needed at Met!

[lennygoran]

Surely would have been better than what they came up with for their last Prince Igor production! Regards, Len


While in NYC we finally had a chance to get to the Roerich Museum on the upper westside-it had been featured a few times on the PBS Thirteen NYC Arts show--for us a little gem of a museum-we loved his paintings and the museum was nicely set up-his paintings made me think of opera and ballet sets he did that I would have loved to have seen-there's only one mention of him with regard to a set at a Met performance. Regards, Len


[Met Concert/Gala] CID:62480
Special Matinee. Matinee ed. Metropolitan Opera House: 03/16/1916.


Borodin: Prince Igor: Polovtsian Dances

First Woman.............Rosina Galli
Warrior Chief...........Giuseppe Bonfiglio
Corps de Ballet
Metropolitan Opera Chorus

Conductor...............Giorgio Polacco

Designer................unknown
Choreographer...........Ottokar Bartik

[This was the first time the company presented the Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor independent of Borodin's opera. The choreography was by Bartik and the design, unattributed, copied the original production at the Maryinsky Theater in St. Petersburg. Two weeks later, on April 3, Diaghilev's visiting Ballets Russes introduced another staging of the Polovtsian Dances, designed by Nicholas Roerich and choreographed by Michel Fokine.]

[John F]

Roerich never designed a Metropolitan Opera production. He is famous for designing the original production of "Rite of Spring" for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, and also did the Polovtsian Dances from "Prince Igor" for them. The Ballets Russes appeared once at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1916. Their souvenir program booklet is here:

https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200181870/

[lennygoran]

Roerich never designed a Metropolitan Opera production.

John thanks-yeah his only Met appearance in terms of a set seems to have been on April 3, 1916--based on the paintings we saw last week I wish he was around now--he could start by designing a set to replace the Met's horrid poppy filled production of Prince Igor they disappointed me with a few years ago. Regards, Len

[maestrob]

The Roerich museum on 107th St. & Central Park West is indeed one of the gems in the city (It gets really cold up there in wintertime!), and they used to produce chamber music concerts on their second floor. It's actually a brownstone building converted to display Roerich's paintings. I had the privilege of producing a performance of Brahms's complete Liebeslieder Walzer with five soloists (myself included) back in the late 1980's (I've still got a program around here somewhere!), as well as a program of opera scenes. The then director couldn't have been more gracious & accommodating. There is a souvenir book published that gives details of Roerich's involvement with Diaghilev and Stravinsky: it's still on my shelves. A lovely and significant place: Len, I'm glad you enjoyed it.

[RebLem]

The second picture down, the one with the log cabin, looks like it could be Peter Grimes's house.

[lennygoran]

A lovely and significant place: Len, I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Brian thanks-we're so glad we finally got there-enjoyed his paintings and apparently his 2 sons and wife were so talented themselves! Regards, Len

[lennygoran]

The second picture down, the one with the log cabin, looks like it could be Peter Grimes's house.

Great thought! Regards, Len

[THEHORN]

A couple of these paintings look like mountain landscapes from the Caucasus , which was not originally a part of Russia and has long been inhabited by a wide variety of indigenous Muslim mountain tribes such as the Chechens , Circassians and others .