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Battling Beauties; Russia's Elgin Marbles in USA?


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So many years of secretiveness and exclusion among the Soviet intelligentsia...no wonder they are a tad resentful (or baffled) when they see the Yankees 'meddling' in their turf.

Have any of you tried to obtain anything from a Soviet...er, Russian...library? Have you tried even to photocopy a page or two, when in a Russian library? My suggestion is to take lotsa ca$h with you...and I don't mean kopecks to feed into the Xerox machine.

In all of my years of research in Russia I can say that one -- and only one -- library-museum was truly user-friendly: the Vaganova Academy Museum. That was due to the graciousness and intelligence of the then-head of it, a lovely lady named Marina Vivien (who moved to Paris a few years ago). Other than that, every experience was like drawing blood from a turnip. They simply do not want to see non-Russian scholars succeed.

Perhaps the subject for another thread.

- Natalia

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:) If the notebooks were Sergeyev's, why would he have been said to have stolen them when all he did was bring them with him?

Sergeyev compiled those notes (more than twenty ballets) as an employee of the Mariinsky; that's why they would be regarded as Mariinsky property. (If you are fired from a job, somebody will "escort" you to the door, just to make sure you don't take any company files, including the rolodex with addresses.)

The Mariinsky was in principle a lifetime employer. And as I recall Sergeyev got a grant from the MT to study in Paris to become the Stepanov guy, so without the support of the MT he couldn't even have made those notes.

As for the other point of view: valuable things tend to leave the country when you do a Revolution, kill the Tzar's family and let failed artists commissar it over the ones with talent for a couple of generations...

BTW I think the Scholl book is great, and sufficiently well-written. The only thing that bothers me is this dissertation habit of summing up the content at the end of a chapter - as if the reader is braindead. And I think he tries to get more mileage from the Wagner - Brunnhilde parallel than is warranted.

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The only thing that bothers me is this dissertation habit of summing up the content at the end of a chapter  -  as if the reader is braindead. And I think he tries to get more mileage from the Wagner - Brunnhilde parallel than is warranted.

:wub: Herman I agree with you about the Ring cycle comparison; that was a stretch for me too. I also wish that the 1999 photos were in color. Trust me: Unless you've seen the 1890 production live, black & white photos do not do it justice.

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