You ought to make a point of going to the opera at least once during the season if you can. There you can get the best of everything - an excellent orchestras, famous conductors, celebrated singers and well dressed audience. But, of course, if you are not fond of music and singing, won't interest you.
At the West End theatres you can see most of the famous English actors and actresses. As a rule, the plays are magnificently staged - costumes, dresses, scenery, everything being done of the most lavish scale. Choose a good play, and you'll enjoy yourself thoroughly from the moment the curtain goes up to the end of the last act. Get your seats beforehand, either at the box-office of theatre itself or at one of the agencies. When you go to a theatre, you'll probably want to seat as near to the stage as possible. But if you are at the cinema, you may prefer to seat some distance from the screen. In fact, I would say, the further away the better.
BRITISH THEATRES
Until recently the history of the English theatre has been build around actors rather then companies. It has been hard to find any London theatre that even had a consistent policy. There are no permanent staff in British theatres. Apply is rehearsed for a few weeks by a company of actors working together mostly for the first time and it is allowed to run as long as it draws the odious and pays it's way.
Another peculiarity of the theatres in Great Britain is an follows: there are two kinds of seats, which can be booked an advanced (bookable), and unbookable once have no numbers and the spectators occupy them on the principal: first come - first served. And ancient times plays were acted inside churches and later on the market places.
The first theatre in England "The Blackfries" build in 1576, and "The Globe" build in 1599, which is closely connected with William Shakespeare. Speaking about our times we should first of all mention "The English National theatre", "The Royal Shakespeare company" and "Covent Garden".
"Covent Garden" used to be a fashionable promenade - it was, before then, a convent garden - but when it became overrun with flower-sellers, orange-vendors and vegetable-growers, the people moved to more exclusive surroundings farther west, such as "St. Jaime's Square".
The first "Covent Garden theatre" was build in 1732. It was burnt down in 1808 and rebuild exactly a year after. It opened in September 1809, with Shakespeare's "Macbeth". Since the middle of the last century "Covent Garden" became exclusively devoted to
opera.
Now "Covent Garden" in busier than ever, it is one of the few well-known opera houses open for 11 months of the year and it employs over 600 people both of the Opera company and the Royal Ballet.
THE NATIONAL THEATRE
It took over the hundred years to establish a national theatre company. It's first director from 1962 was Lawrence Olivier. This is the first state theatre Britain has ever had. A special building for it was opened in 1976. It has three theatres in one: "The Oliver theatre", the biggest is for the main classical repertoire; "The Lyttilton", a bit smaller is for new writing and for visiting foreign countries and "The Cottesloe theatre", the smallest is used for experimental writing and productions. "The Royal Shakespeare company" are divided between the country and the capital and it's produces plays mainly by Shakespeare and his contemporaries when it performs is "Stratford -on-Avon", and modern plays in it's two auditory in the Cities, Barbican centre.
MOSCOW THEATRES
For decades Moscow has had a reputation as a city of theatres. The birth plays of the historic "Bolshoy", "Maly" and "Moscow Art" theatres the city has been and steel is a centre for the development exploratory modern ideas in the dramatic art and is famous for it's great number of highly gifted, interesting directors, actors, playwrights and artists.
Every evening the doors of Moscow theatres open to streams of theatre-goers. The best Moscow theatres devoted themselves to developing the principals of directing and acting laid down by Stanislavsky, Meerhold, Nemerovich-Danchenko, Vachtangov and others. The discoveries and successes of Moscow theatres today exists due to experience and triumphs of preceding generations. I'd like to tell you about the Bolshoy Theatre. The majestic building of the Bolshoy Theatre stands in Theatre Square in Moscow's central quater, not far from Kremlin. This is the leading Russian opera house with the best vocalists and choreographers in it's company.
The Bolshoi traces it's history to 1776 when a standing opera company was organized in Moscow. The first opera shown in Bolshoi theatre was opera "life of tsar" (now "Ivan Susanin").At later times operas by Dargomyzhsky, Serov, Tcaikovsky, Borodin, Moussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Rubinstein were produced here. At the same time the Bolshoi company staged the best operas and ballets by West European composers-Mozart, Rossini, Weber, Verdi and others.
The Bolshoi ballet company enjoys well-deserved fame as the world's finest. This is equally true of it's brilliant realistic style of performance and repertoire.
My visit to the theatre.
In our time the rhythm of life is very fast, especially in big cities. That’s why people want to see plays full of action, and many theatres offers such plays. One of my favourite play “Женитьба Фигаро” is one of them. It staged in “Ленком” and the cast was excellent: there were a great amount of young actors in this play. All of actors played with great feeling. Besides this in play acted my favourite theatre-actor Лазарев (junior). I know that this play is a hit, that’s why it have a long run and were very popular, but when I and my friend saw it, it was new place and audience were surprised by the scenery and the power of the music. All of us had a wonderful evening.
ART IN MY LIFE.
Nobody can imaging his life without art. The role of art in our life is tremendous. Art develops in us the sense of beauty, such qualities as kindness, sympathy, dignity. It teaches us to hate cruelty selfishness, cowardice. Art helps us to leave and makes our life more interesting. It develops our cultural level. History of arts dates back to ancient times. Art arises with the bothof a man. All kinds of art: painting, sculpture, music, literature, theatre, architecture are closely connected with each other. Art is immortal. Now we enjoy the best works of ancient masters of many countries. Each nation has it’s own unique art. People try to express through their works their attitude to life, describe the world around them, expiration and thought of people living with them.
Every of us has favourite artist, but for me there are a few famous name in the history of art. One of them is Michelangelo Buonarotti. He was a painter, a sculptor, and architect and a poet.
Michelangelo was born in 1475 in a small Italian town near Florence. At the age of twelve, he was apprenticed to Ghirlandaio, a well-known Italian artist. He learnt to draw copying other artist’s painting. He soon became interested in sculpture, too.
Michelangelo’s first great work was the Pieta for St. Peter Cathedral. After this, in Florence, he produced his famous statue of David. We have a copy of this statue in Pushkin Fine Art Museum.
From 1508 to 1511 he was painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. People consider the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel to be one of the world’s greatest and most amazing works of art.
Michelangelo embodied the perfect multitalented Renaissance man. His influence on later artists is immense.
ART IN MOSCOW
Speaking about art galleries of Moscow we must mention the most famous galleries.
The State Tretyakov gallery
The State Tretyakov gallery is one of the best known picture galleries in Russia. It takes it's name from it's founder Pavel Tretyakov, a Moscow merchant. In the 19'th century Tretyakov began to collect Russian paintings. He visited all the exhibitions and art studios and bought the best pictures. Little by little Tretyakov extended his interests and began to collect earlier Russian paintings. In 1881 Tretyakov opened in St. Petersburg to the public, 11 years later he donated it to the city of Moscow. Since then the gallery has received hundred paintings from other museums and private collections. The Tretyakov gallery reflects the whole history of Russian paintings from 11'th century to the present day.
The State Pushkin Museum of Fine Art.
Also I'd like to tell you about state Pushkin museum of fine art. The building was built in Greek stile by Roman Klein in 1898 - 1912 to house a museum of fine art, founded of initiative of professor Ivan Cvetayev. Since 1937 it has be known as The Puskin museum of fine art. It has one of the worlds largest ancient collections of European art. Now the picture gallery has over 2 thousands works of various schools of painting which enaibous us to understand and appreciate the variety of staills over the centuries.
The Pushkin museum periodically hald's exhibition of the art of various countries and of individual outstanding artist of past and present.
ART GALLEREYS OF LONDON
Speaking about art galleries of London we should first of all mention The national gallery, The national portrait gallery and The Tate gallery. I would like to tell you about National portrait gallery and about Tate gallery.
National gallery.
The national gallery houses one of the richest and most extensive collections of painting in the world. It stands to the north of the Trafalgar Square. the gallery was designed by William Wilkins and build in 1834-37. The collection covers all schools and periods of painting, but is a specially famous for it's examples of Rembrant and Rubents. The British schools is only moderately represented as the national collections are shared with the Tate gallery. The National gallery was founded in 1824 when the government bought the collection of John Angerstein which included 38 paintings.
The Tate gallery houses the national collection of British painting from the 16-th century to the present day. It is also the national gallery for modern art, including painting and sculpture made in Britain, Europe, America and other countries. It was opened in 1897 as the national gallery of British art. It owes it's establishment to Sue Henritate who built the gallery and gave his own collection of 65 painting.
National portrait gallery.
The National portrait gallery adjoins the National gallery. The collection was founded in 1856 with the object of illustration British history, literature, arts and science. By means of portraits of the most famous men and women. The collection numbers over 4500 paintings, sculpture and drawing representing about 3500 persons. A part from those of the Royal family no portrait is admitted until it’s subject has been dead for ten years. Only about one third of the collection is on view but any portrait can usually been show on request. The portraits in the gallery are arranged more or less in chronological order.
Outstanding British artists.
William Hogarth (1697-1764) is sometimes called “the father of English painting”, he created a great body of work based on English life and culture, and work hard to improve the position of British artists.
Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788) was with Reynolds the greatest British portraitist of the 18th century. But he personally prefer landscape painting and made a central contribution to the development of this important aspect of British art.
THE RENAISSANSE.
The Renaissance or the revival of learning was the period then European culture was at it’s high. It lasted from the 14’th century till 17’th century, and was coursed by complex economic situation and social conditions. The feudal system was been shuttled by the bourgeoisie, which was getting stronger and stronger. It was more profitable to unite under a single rouler. Absolute monarchy came into being. This lead to the forming of nations and the true sense of the world. New social and economic conditions called for the new ideology, because the catholic dogmas didn’t correspond to the new trend of life. For this reason in many European countries the protestant religion spread up and national churches were established.
Instead of the blind face ordered by the catholic then appeared a new outlook which was called humanism. The time demanded positive recional knowledge and this demand was supplied: in astronomy by Copernicus, in philosophy by Tomas More, in geography by Columbus, Vaska de Gama and others. Leonardo de Vinci was force a new theory of art: “It was the greatest progressive revolution that mankind have so far experience, a time, which called for “Giants” and produced Giants in power and thought, passion and character in universality and language.”
An example of a typical men of the Renaissance period was: the famous Englishmen sir Walter Raleigh, he was a soldier, sailor, explorer, pirate, coloniser, historian, philosopher and a poet. He was much interested in science and literature. He wrote works of geography and lead expedition to South America. He was an outstanding poet. His poems are full of profound wisdom, written with great elegance and salacity of style. He organised of “academy”. Christopher Marlowe the greatest dramatist (before Shakespeare). But the most important of most this writer and one of the greatest men of this period was sir Thomas More.
Thomas More.
He came into great favour and made a repaid carrier as a statesmen, at the same time writing works of a political, philosophical and historical character. His most famous book is “Utopia”. “Utopia” - means “no place, no there”. The work is writing in Latin and divided into two books. Thomas More was the first writer in Europe to formulate communist principals as a bases of society.
THE RRNAISSANSE IN ENGLAND.
The prides of Shakespeare.
The most brilliant period of English literature was in the second half of the 16’th and beginning of 17’th century. Sometimes it’s called “Elizabethan age” after queen Elizabeth 5. England had become a great world power. It had established wide commercial contact with countries And rich trading company had been organised. The English people were now a great nation and the English language enriched was now not unlike the language of Chaucer. Many famous poetical and prose works appeared. Among those who enriched the literary heritage of this period ere sir Philip Sydney, Adnond Spenser and Christopher Marlowe. There were fine works of poetry and prose in the Elizabethan age but the greatest hight’s of literature of this period were reached in drama.
Life of Shakespeare.
The great poet and dramatist William Shakespeare is often called by his people “Our National Bard”, “The Immortal. Poet of nature” and “The Great Unknown”. More than two hundred contemporary references to Shakespeare have been located among church records, legal records, documents in the Public Record Office, and miscellaneous repositories. When these owe assembled, we have at least the skeleton out line of his life, beginning with his baptise on April 26, 1564, in Trinity Church, Stratford-on-Avon, and ending with his burial there on April 25, 1616. Shakespeare native place was Sratford-on-Avon, a little town in Warwickshire, which is generally described as begin in the middle of England.
Shakespeare’s father, John, was a prosperious glove maker of Stratford who, after holding minor municipal offices, was elected high bailiff of Stratford. Shakespeare’s mother Mary Arden, came from an affluent family of landowners.
Shakespeare probably received his early education at the excellent Stratford Grammar School, supervised by an Oxford graduate, where he would have learned Latin smattering of Greek.
In 1582 Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, who lived in a neighbouring hamlet. The first child born to Ann and William was their daughter Susanna. In about two years Ann bore him twins a boy and a girl, Hamlet and Judith.
Then life in Stratford became intolerable for William Shakespeare and he decided to go to London and began a theatrical career. Shakespeare major activity lay in the field of drama. He became a full shareholder in his acting company, he was part-owner of “the Globe” theatre and later of “the Blackfriars” theatre, and in 1597 he purchased property in Stradford. Including new place, one of the largest houses in the town. He probably refired there about 1610, travelling of London when necessary to take cave of his theatrical business. In all, 154 sonnets sequence. The sonnets were probably written in the 1590 but were first published in 1609.