C. The british theatre is dying.
A conversation between Alfred Leathers, an old actor, and Martin Cheveril, a playwright and producer.
Alfred: Martin, my boy, I've been acting too long and — as the youngsters are to say — I've had it.
Martin: Nonsense, Alfred.
Alfred: No, no. Mean what I say. In fact the Theatre's had it. The Theatre's finished and we might as well admit it.
Martin: It was different when you were young, of course — eh?
Alfred: Different? I should think it was.
Martin: You've seen some great nights in the Theatre, I imagine, Alfred—eh? (It is like a prompt.)
Alfred: I have, Martin. Great nights. And they'll never come again. Don't forget that in my time I've played with Irving, Ellen Terry and Tree.
Martin: Great names, Alfred.
Alfred:Ah — but the Theatre was the Theatre in those days, Martin. It was all the public had, and so we all did our best with it. None of your films and radio and television and the rest of them then. It was the Theatre — and the Theatre as it ought to be.
Martin: The Theatre's dying — though it may last out our time.
Alfred:Yes, thank God. But I don't give it much longer.
Martin (smiles at him): Well, you see, Alfred, I know that speech about the dying Theatre. I've heard it before.
Alfred: Exactly. And everything goes to prove.
Martin: That you're an elderly actor, Alfred, and that the Theatre's dying for you. It's always been dying for the old hands. And it's always been born again for the new ones. And that's not its weakness — that's its strength. It lives — really lives and not merely exists, but lives as humanity lives — just because it's for ever dying and being born, because it's always renewing its life.
Alfred (not convinced):Now wait. It's dying for me, we'll say but who is it being born for?
(The door opens and Otley comes in.)
Otley:Miss Seward's here.
Martin (to Otley): Send her in. (To Alfred) Your answer's here.
Exercise 2.Find in the dialogues English equivalents for these word combinations and sentences
1. имеется несколько мест в партере. 2. в середине второго ряда. 3. начинается новый театральный сезон. 4. Композитор сам принимал активное участие в ее постановке. 5. Я бы сказала, что это почти невозможно. 6. когда спасение казалось невозможным. 7. Насколько я знаю он (спектакль) имел большой успех. 8. Как вы объясните успех пьес на производственную тему? 9. вопросы, которые поднимают пьесы. 10. Современный человек проводит много времени на работе. 11. Не забывайте, что в мое время я играл с... 12. и всего прочего. 13. и в этом не слабость, а сила театра.
Exercise 3.Quote the sentences in which these words and word combinations are used in the dialogues and translate them.
circle seats, a theatre-goer, to set up, classical, repertoire, to seat, to sell out, to seem, to stage, success, to account for, to take up, activities, to admit, to forget, the rest of, to prove, humanity, to convince
Exercise 4.Make the necessary substitutions and reproduce the dialogues.
1. A: Have you got two seats for tomorrow's performance?
B. clerk: I've got a few stalls and two circle seats.
(A: tonight's performance, the matinee; B.C.: two, four; three, six)
2. A: Where are the seats.?
В. clerk: They're in the middle of the third row
(B: clerk: fourth, seventh, eighth)
3. A: What plays does the theatre stage?
B: Both classical and modern.
(A: operas, ballets)
4. A: For what purpose was the new theatre set up?
B: For the purpose of producing plays by modern playwrights.
(B: operas, composers; ballets, composers)
5. A: How did the British audience like the performance?
B: As far as I know it was a great success.
(A: American, French, Canadian)
Exercise 5.What would you say if you took part in these dialogues? Dramatize them.
1. A: Have you got two seats for the evening performance?
B. clerk: ...
A: In what row are the stalls?*
B. clerk: ...
A: How much are they?
B. clerk: ...
A: All right, I'll take them.
B. clerk: ...
Note: В английских театрах нумерация рядов в партере идет по буквам алфавита А (1), В (2), С (3) и т. д.
2. A: I know you're an admirer of ballet, Mary. Could you tell me about the new productions at the Bolshoi Theatre?
M: ...
A: Did you happen to see any of them?
M: ...
A: Is it difficult to book seats?
M: ...
A: Thank you. It's very kind of you.
3. A: I saw "Fairy tales Fantasies" at the Sovremennik Theatre last week.
B: ...
A: It impressed me greatly. This is a play about young people. The main character, Faryatyev is a very kind man dreaming* of cosmic contacts.
B: ...
Note: dream (dreamt [dremt]) мечтать
4. A: Did you see "The Echelon" at the Art Theatre?
B: ...
A: How did you like the performance?
B: ...
A: Do you know that the play was staged in Houston,
the USA?
B: ...
5. A: Could you believe if somebody told you that the
theatre was dying?
B: ... A: Can we say that the theatre is always renewing its
life?
B: ...
6. A: In my opinion the theatre is always dying for
some of the old actors who lose touch with reality. Do you agree with me?
B: ...
Note: to lose touch [t/\t∫] with smth., smb. терять связь с чём-л., кем-л
Exercise 6.Act as an interpreter.
Jenny Shaw: I would have never believed it was possible to stage a ballet based on Dostoevsky's "Idiot" if I hadn't seen it myself.
Зоя Чурилова: Вы имеете в виду балет, который поставил Петербургский балетный ансамбль (ensemble [a:n'sa:mbl])?
Jenny: Yes. It was a marvelous performance. I hadn't enjoyed myself so much for a long time. Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony perfectly suits the ballet. The dancers are wonderful. Have you seen this ballet?
Зоя: Да. Я видела его в прошлом году и получила огромное удовольствие. Кстати, этот ансамбль был создан не так давно.
Jenny:Unbelievable! As far as I know there are several ballet theatres in Moscow and St. Petersburg and now there appeared this ensemble. For what purpose was it set up?
Зоя: Я читала о том, что основатели (founder) театра решили использовать камерную музыку для постановки балетных спектаклей. Репертуар ансамбля в основном включает одноактные балеты.
Jenny: I suppose one can speak of a new trend in your opera and ballet. In Moscow you have the Chamber Musical Theatre, as to St. Petersburg Ballet Ensemble you may call it the Chamber Ballet Theatre.
Зоя: Я бы не назвала это «тенденцией». По-моему, это объясняется желанием постановщиков, музыкантов, певцов, танцовщиков и зрителей расширить (to broaden) жанры оперы и балета.
Jenny: That sounds very interesting. I must say there's a lot to learn and see in your country for an admirer of opera and ballet.
Зоя:Да, очень много интересного. Я бы также посоветовала вам сходить в Детский музыкальный театр. Если я не ошибаюсь, это единственный в мире музыкальный театр для детей.
Jenny: What does it stage?
Зоя:Оперы и музыкальные спектакли. Его постановки пользуются огромным успехом. Билеты достать почти невозможно.
Jenny: Thank you for the advice. I'll try my best to get tickets there.
Exercise 7.Translate into English.
1. — Есть ли у вас места в партере на завтрашний вечерний спектакль?
— Есть только два места в десятом ряду.
— Сколько они стоят?
— По два рубля каждый.
— Я возьму их. Вот деньги.
— Вот билеты и сдача.
2. — Как летит время. (Time flies.) Мы все считали Кукольный театр Образцова молодым, нам казалось, что он недавно организован, а он уже отпраздновал свой пятидесятилетний юбилей.
— Это и мой любимый театр. Думаю, что это единственный кукольный театр в мире, который пользуется популярностью как у детей, так и у взрослых
— Да, вы правы. И на детские, и на взрослые спектакли почти невозможно достать билеты.
— Мой любимый спектакль — «Необыкновенный концерт». Должен сказать, что этот спектакль пользуется успехом во всех странах мира.
3. — Чем объясняется популярность пьес Чехова во всем мире?
— По-моему, тем, что Чехов поднимает общечеловеческие проблемы, которые интересуют всех людей
— Какие пьесы Чехова вам больше всего нравятся?
— «Дядя Ваня» и «Чайка».
4. - Я только что просмотрел театральную афишу ( playbill ) и увидел, что во многих театрах идут пьесы зарубежных авторов.
— Русский театр всегда ставил пьесы зарубежных драматургов, как классиков, так и современных.
— Кто из современных американских драматургов пользуется наибольшей популярностью?
— По-моему, Тенесси Уильямc (Tennessee ['tenәsi] Williams). Его пьеса «Трамвай-желание» ("А Streetcar Named Desire") пользовалась большим успехом в течение ряда лет.
Exercise 8. Make up dialogues based on this picture.
Text 4
THE ARTS IN BRITAIN.
Exercise 1.Read the text and do the exercises.
Notes: flourish - преуспевать
Edinburgh International Festival – Международный Эдинбургский фестиваль (ежегодный музыкальный и театральный фестиваль в г.Эдинбурге в августе – сентябре . Проводится с 1947г.)
Aldeburgh – Олдборо (город в графстве Суффолк; место проведения ежегодных музыкальных фестивалей. Первый состоялся по инициативе композитора Бенджамина Бриттена в 1948г.)
Windsor –Виндзор, ( место загородной резиденции английских королей)
Cheltenham – Челтнем (город в графстве Глостершир, где проводится ежегодный фестиваль современной английской музыки)
Glyndebourne – Глайндборн (имение близ г.Льюиса в графстве Суссекс, где проводится ежегодный оперный фестиваль)
Arts Council – Совет по искусствам.
distribute – распределять, раздавать.
encourage – поддерживать, поощрять.
exert – оказывать давление, влиять.
diversity – многообразие, разнообразие.
The arts in Britain are flourishing, and present a varied and lively picture. London has become an international forum of the arts, with major exhibitions of painting and sculpture and theatre, opera and ballet companies and orchestras drawing large audiences. Throughout Britain there are festivals and centers of artistic activity — among them are the Edinburgh International Festival 2, the music festivals at Aldeburgh 3, Windsor 4 and Cheltenham 5 and opera at Glyndebourne 6.
The spread of musical interest in Britain owes much to the British Broadcasting Corporation with its daily music programme and its partial financing of the Promenade Concerts at the Royal Albert Hall, London.
There are over 900 museums and art galleries in Britain and art exhibitions are shown all over the country through the Arts Council 7, which distributes 8 government grants for music, drama, painting and sculpture. Local authorities play an important part in encouraging 9 the arts, supporting galleries, orchestras and arts centers – an example is the ambitious Midlands Art Centre for young people in Birmingham.
British artists, writers, musicians and architects exert 10 a powerful influence abroad. Notable figures include sculptors Henry Moore and Anthony Caro, painters Francis Bacon and Graham Sutherland and, among younger artists, Richard Smith, winner of a major international prize in 1967, Richard Hamilton, who painted the first "pop" picture, and Bridget Riley, internationally known artist whose work has also inspired fashion.
British music owes much to the composer Benjamin Britten, whose influence has produced a new school of British opera. In architecture the work of Sir Basil Spence (Coventry Cathedral, Sussex University) and the collective work of modern British architects in housing and town planning are outstanding.
Literature presents great diversity. Poetry has received fresh stimulus from regional movements including the Liverpool poets, who write for public performance. Among novelists of worldwide reputation are Graham Greene, Angus Wilson, William Golding, Iris Murdoch and Muriel Spark.
Exercise 2.Answer the questions.
A
1. What kinds of artistic activity do we mean when speaking about the arts in Britain?
2. What music festivals take place in Britain? What role does the BBC play in the development of musical interests in Britain?
3. What does the Arts Council do to encourage the arts in Britain? Can you give any examples?
4. What names of contemporary British novelists, composers and other people of arts do you know?
Exercise 3.
You came across some names of British sculptors, painters, artists in the text. Do you know any names of Britain's famous writers, poets, musicians, actors and singers?
Text 5
Exercise 1.There are 900 museums and art galleries in Britain. Do you know the number of museums in your republic (region, district, town)? Do you often go to museums? What kind of museums do you prefer?
Exercise 2.Read about one of Russian picture galleries and be ready to answer the questions.
The Treatyakov Gallery.
One of the best-known picture galleries in Russia is the State Tretyakov Gallery. It is housed in a small but very Russian-looking building in the centre of Moscow. The Gallery takes its name after its founder P.M.Tretyakov, who began to collect Russian paintings in 1856 for the purpose of bringing art close to all people.
The gallery contains halls devoted to old Russian painting, to great painters of the 18th and 19th centuries, and to modern art.
Probably the best-known among the old Russian painters is Andrei Rublyov. His “Trinity” painted about the year 1411, is remarkable because, although it is the manner of the old icon painters, it is more humanistic and reflects in a new way the life and soul of Russian people.
Tretyakov began his collection with the works of the “peredvizhniki” – the artists who belonged to the Society of Travelling Art Exhibitions, so it is natural that canvases of masters such as Kramskoy, Perov and Ghe have a big place there. Well-known to lovers of art all over the world are “Morning in a Pine Wood” by Shishkin and “Ivan Tsarevich on the Grey Wolf” by Vasnetsov, “Golden Autumn” by Levitan, “Volga Baotmen” by Repin.
There are a lot of exhibits in the gallery of the Soviet period in art. For example, the gallery contains a lot of works by Ioganson, Gerasimov, Plastov and others.
The Tretyakov Gallery also organizes exhibitions in other towns and cities. Thus it continues the tradition of its founder to bring real art to people.
Exercise 3. Questions:
1. Why is the gallery named in this way?
2. Whose works can we see in the halls of the gallery?
3. What was and is the main task of the gallery?
Text 6
Exercise 1.You will hear 5 advertisements. Set up a correspondence between the advertisements 1 – 5 and the names of museums given in list A-F. Use each letter only once. There is one spare name. You will hear the texts twice.
A. Museum of the Moving Image
B. Museum of Transport
C. Health Care Museum
D. Theatre Museum
E. National Museum of History
F. National Museum of Medicine.
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Text 7
FAMOUS MEN OF ARTS.
Exercise 1.Look through the following short text, choose one person that is of special interest to you and tell the group about him.
1. Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) was the most outstanding portraitist of the second half of the 18th century. He was born in Devoshire in 1723. He received a good education from his father, a clergyman and master of the free grammar school. At seventeen Reynolds went to London to study painting, where he soon became a fashionable portrait-painter. In 1768 Reynolds became the first president of the Royal Academy founded at that time.
Reynolds completed a whole gallery of portraits of his famous contemporaries. He painted his models in heroic style showing them as the best people of the nation. His portraits are not free of certain idealization of characters.
Reynolds' devotion to portraiture made him one of the founders of the English school of portrait painting at that time. Some of his mythological works include real personages.
2.John Constable was the first English landscape painter to ask no lessons from the Dutch. He was born on the river Stour. The beauty of the surrounding meadows, its woods and rivers became the subject of his painting. It was his desire to give a true and full impression of nature. Constable’s landscapes are generally calm, pleasant outdoor scenes, which are full of sunlight. But the representation of nature Constable painted in a new and different way. The essence of each was that there was absolutely no idealization of the scene before him. “Hay wain” was exhibited in 1824 in Paris and had immediate and lasting effect on French art. His pure brilliant colour was a discovery to French painting. Among his other best pictures there are: “Deham Vale”, “Flaford Mill”, “White Horse”, “The Country Lane”.
3. I.I.Repin is one of the best-known Russian painters. He was one of the famous peredvizhniki. Repin liked drawing from his childhood, so his parents sent him to the Art school. In 1864 Repin entered the Academy of Arts in St.Petersburg. There he met Kramskoy, a great master and a public figure who influenced Repin greatly.
Repin’s first large canvas was “Volga boatmen”. It reflects the hard life of the Russian people. One can see poor men who are tired out by their inhuman labour as they pool a barge up the river. “Ivan Grozny and his son Ivan” is Repin’s second historical painting. Zsar Ivan is shown holding the body of this elder son – Prince Ivan whom he has just killed. The Zsar’s eyes in a pale face reflect his soul and the horror of what he has done.
Repin is famous for painting of portraits. The portrait of Musorgsky is a masterpiece of portrait painting
4.Charles Dickens was the representative of critical realism in the XIX century in English literature. His childhood was hard. At the age of 10 he went to work to the factory. The boy worked from early morning till late at night. Dickens described this period in the novel “David Copperfield”.
In 1836 he published his first book “Sketches by Boz”, a collection of short stories from London life. Then followed “Pickwick Papers” which made the author famous. His next novels were “Oliver Twist”, “Nicolas Nickleby”. In 1842 Dickens visited America and wrote “American Notes”, where he gave a realistic picture of that society.
During the following years Dickens published “Dombey and Son”, “Black House” and others. His books are translated into many languages and are in great demand.
5.Jack London is an American writer. He was born in 1876 in San-Francisco. From his early childhood he earned his living by selling newspapers. After work he ran to school. Jack London liked reading. He was fond of books about adventures and travelers. He went to the port and watched the sailors and their work. He wanted to become a sailor and when he was 17 he started to Japan. When he came back home he wrote some sea stories. He became a writer and wrote about 500 books: short stories and novels. One of the most famous is “White Fang”.
6. George Gordon Byron was born in 1788 into an old aristocratic family. He liked history and read much about Rome, Greece and Turkey. The boy was lame but he liked sports and trained every day.
At 17 he entered Cambridge University and his literary career began. When he was a student he publishes his first collection of poems “Hours of Idleness”. In a year he published his first satire “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers”. He traveled much and visited Portugal, Spain, Greece and Turkey. Byron described his travels in a long poem “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage”.
In 1817 Byron went to Italy where he was involved into the struggle for the national independence of Italy. There he wrote his best satiric poems “Don Juan” and “Chain”.
Then he went to Greece and there he died in 1824.
7.Michael Lermontov was born in Moscow in a noble family. In 1830 he entered Moscow University, but very soon he had to leave it. Then he entered St. Petersburg school of Cavalry Cadets. He finished it and was commissioned in the Hussar regiment of the Emperial Guard.
In 1837 the poet was exiled to the Caucasus for his poem on Pushkin’s death. During his second exile he was provoked into a personal quarrel with an old schoolfellow which led to the duel. On July 15, 1841 the poet was killed. He was not even twenty seven years old.
Lermontov began writing when he was very young. One of his first writing to be published in 1835 was his tale verse “Hadji Abrek”. Whether Lermontov chose to write poetry, prose or drama, the stamp of his genius was always found on it.
Lermontov’s poems “The Demon”, “Mtsyri” and the “Lay of the Merchant Kalashnikov” his innumerable lyrics, his novel “A Hero of Our Time” and his play “Masquerade” are masterpieces of Russian literature. Lermontov tremendously influenced in his writing by the ideas of the Decembrists. Lermontov’s poems are the protestation of faith of an independent and free man.
SPEECH EXERCISES
Exercise 1.
1. What theatrical (ballet) performances would you advise a foreign colleague to see in Moscow? 2. What is your favourite drama theatre? 3. Who is your favourite Russian (British) playwright? 4. What would you rather see: a drama or an opera? 5. Who is your favourite actor (actress, ballet-dancer, singer)?
Exercise 2.What role can museums and art galleries play in the upbringing of children? Can any child become a good person without arts' influence? What do you think about it?
WRITTEN TASKS
1. You’ve got a letter from your pen friend Mary who writes:
“…In your previous letter you told me that you had joined your school Literature Club. I wonder what you do at your club meetings. Can I help you in any way?”
Write a letter to Mary.
In your letter
- tell her about your Literature Club
- ask 3 questions about books popular with her classmates.
2. Comment on the following statement.
a)When photography was invented some people predicted that photographs would soon replace painted portraits. However, portraits have been painted for many years after the invention of photography.
What can you say for and against a portrait made by an artist?
b) When cinema was invented some people predicted that theatre would not last very long but it still exists, attracts large audience and is not likely to disappear.
Whatcan you say for and against theatre?