Russian figure skating news in 2024

[Amy L]

I’ve heard it’s like the difference between TS Eliot and Walt Whitman. The former is more famous internationally but the latter is sort of a permanent American poet laureate.

When I took Russian literature, the professor would say Pushkin nashe vsyo/ Pushkin is our everything. I just typed that phrase into Google and indeed it is a real saying I think I liked Chekhov better myself, but I'm not an expert or anything, I really hated those classes lol

 

[On My Own]

I like Chekhov the best

 

[panda42]

Pushkin was around much earlier than the others and may still be considered the father of modern Russian literature. I have read some of his poetry, but Dostoevsky and Tolstoy's novels are still studied in schools and they are more widely known in the US (Chekhov for his plays).

 

[PRlady]

I’m a huge Doestyevski fan, Brothers Karamozov and The Possessed are among the best books I’ve ever read. While knowing I lost a lot reading in translation.

 

[On My Own]

The Idiot and The Brothers Karamozov for me.

 

[Amy L]

I knew a girl in college who was taking Russian because she was a Dostoyevsky superfan and wanted to learn to read his books in the original language. I started and stopped Crime and Punishment three times and never read it even when it was assigned. I don't recall liking much of Pushkin either. But I remember that Tolstoy's Alyosha the Pot was good. And I quite liked Gogol, though he was from Ukraine. Does he still count, since he wrote primarily in Russian?

I wasn't crazy about Russian literature, but I have a lot to say about Russian classical composers. I can bring this back to skating if I have to

 

[PRlady]

Here you go: watching Anna Pezzetta, whom I like a lot, do Black Swan made me wonder if you really need to be Russian to do justice to Tchaikovsky. I actually sorta think so, or at least you need some training in Russian ballet tradition.

(I also think most eastern Euro and Russian dance teams look dumb doing rock, there’s something they’re missing, but that’s gonna be a very unpopular opinion.)

 

[panda42]

The Idiot and The Brothers Karamozov for me.

The Idiot was so sad! I loved Crime and Punishment and plan to read The Brothers Karamazov soon.

 

[Wyliefan]

I've heard Russian opera performers say that Eugene Onegin is a huge deal over there -- that they all grew up studying it in school and so forth.

 

[kwanfan1818]

It is. When the Bolshoi presented the new production by Dmitri Tcherniakov -- it was set indoors, and many dining room chairs were toppled; there's a DVD with Mariusz Kwiecien -- Galina Vishnevskaya "called his show a 'public desecration'" and vowed not to step foot in the Bolshoi Theatre again while it was playing. (The Times said she said this in 2006, so it couldn't have been at the main theater itself, as it didn't reopen until months after 2011 Worlds. Maybe the New Stage?)

When we were in Moscow for 2005 Worlds, @cygnus and I saw one of the last performances of the traditional, revered production before the main theater closed for renovations. Near us was a grandfather who had taken his young grandson, who was maybe eight or so, to see it. Definitely not the kid-friend abridged Julie Taymor Magic Flute that the Met Opera puts on for kids.

 

[On My Own]

I wasn't crazy about Russian literature, but I have a lot to say about Russian classical composers. I can bring this back to skating if I have to

Khatchaturian and Tchaikovsky > Rachmaninov

 

[Amy L]

Rachmaninov is my homeboy! He's my favorite, along with Prokofiev, but also props to Stravinsky and Shostakovich for being weirdos.