BBC's new War and Peace: where is the music?

(The Hussars' Ballad)

A hussar hero of 1812, Denis Davydov

I know what I really-really miss in BBC's new TV adaptation of Tolstoy's 'War and Peace', it's the music.

Many greatest scenes in the novel, and in previous screen versions, are accompanied by great musical background: Natasha singing and dancing, armies marching and the great ball with the Emperor. In the first two episodes of the BBC series there is hardly any music, if at all.

BBC's guide to War and Peace and the new TV series has a dedicated page here. Don't get lost in Russian names and complicated narrative.

The lack of music on the one hand, and the obvious 'sexing-up' of Tolstoy in the new adaptation reminded me of a tremendously popular Soviet musical comedy 'The Hussars Ballad' ("Гусарская баллада", Wikipedia article in English here). Eldar Ryazanov's film is based on a play 'A Long Time Ago' ("Давным-давно") by Alexander Gladkov with original score by Tikhon Khrennikov.

The story is a comedy of errors. Shurochka (Alexandra), a young patriotically minded girl runs away from home dressed up as a hussar cornet (second lieutenant, like the young Churchill) and joins the Russian army fighting Napoleon's invasion in 1812. There, she finds her own true love, gets decorated with a medal, meets field-marshal Kutuzov and the hussar hero of the war Denis Davydov (Davyd Vassiliev in the film and Vassily Denisov in Tolstoy's novel). All along she and others sing beautiful songs.

The film and the musical numbers are still very popular and Poruchik (lieutenant) Rzhevsky, the main male character, since the film has started a folk lore life of its own as a hero of numerous bawdy jokes. This is where the 'sexing-up' reference comes in.

Story lines in the film are reminiscent of Tolstoy's many subplots and there really was a woman in 1812 who sneaked in disguise into the Russian cavalry during the war.

The film is available in full on the Mosfilm's YouTube channel here. (no subtitles, but you won't need them). And here is the Song of King Henry IV from the film, the whole Napoleonic invasion of 1812 in 100 seconds (lyrics unrelated to the story).

 

Economy, stupid. Plural Instrumental.

— Чем преодолеть беды России? [How do we solve Russia's many problems?]

— It's the economy, stupid!

— Иконами так иконами! [Oh, with icons? All right, with icons then.]

Mephistopheles
by Mark Antololsky,
marble, Hermitage. 

This joke is making rounds on Russian social networks. It is based on the near homophony between the English word 'economy' and the Russian plural instrumental of 'icons' — eekónami. With only a slight difference in pronunciation in the accented 'o' in Russian.

I can only explain the sudden burst in the joke's popularity as a public's reaction to the increasing number of 'Orthodox activists's' attacks on objects of secular art in Russia. In one recent incident in Petersburg a 'cossack' team smashed a bas-relief face depicting Mephistopheles on a 1910 art nouveau building. (story and image here)

Hundreds gathered today at the site to protest and a large poster with the image of the bas-relief was put up to cover the empty space on the wall.    

Fyodor Shaliapin sings Mephistopheles's aria Le veau d'or from Charles Gounod's opera 'Faust'. It is this particular aria that made Mephistopheles into a popular icon in Russia:

Comrade Rudolph, or the Red Knows

A reader sent me this Christmas joke, which I thought was one of those silly ones from inside a cracker. But the political reference and the mention of a historical date – 1956, the year of Khrushev's denunciation of Stalin, lead me to think it might be a contemporary anecdote, though not originating from Russia herself since Rudolph the rein-deer is hardly known there. Does anyone know the source?

Here is how it goes:

'An elderly Russian couple were walking down a Moscow street in 1956. The husband looks at his wife and says, “my love I just felt a snow flake on my face”. 

“No” she says “I think it was rain”. 

“No I am sure it was a snow flake” he says”. 

His wife looks at him very troubled. 

“This is terrible” she says “how are we going to find the official party line on whether it is snowing or raining”

At that moment they see Comrade Rudolph coming towards them. 

“Comrade, can you help us” says the wife “is it officially snowing or raining?”

“It is raining” says Comrade Rudolph walking off in a hurry. 

The couple set off again but the husband is worried. 

“My love” he says “I am sure that it is snowing”. 

“Don’t worry” says his wife soothingly “Rudolph the Red knows rain, dear”

Here is a nice jazzy version of Rudolph. Note that Santa invites the Red to guide his sleigh through the night:

Le Pen, Chapayev and the Universal Rhyme

At the recent regional elections in France Nicolas Sarkozy's UMP party had a good thrashing from the left and the greens. Where I live Sarkozy isn't very popular. Here is a joke I heard from a French friend.

Sarkozy et Le Pen sont sur un bateau.
Les deux tombent à l'eau.
Qui est sauvé? - La France

Sarkozy and Le Pen were sailing in a boat.
Both fell overboard. Who was saved?
France!

I was struck by the similarity of this simpley-dimpley rhyme to the Russian one I remember since I was in primary school.

Micky-Greggy and Chapay were sailing in the boat.
Micky-Greggy fell overboard and drowned.
Who stayed in the boat?

If you were naive enough to shout: 'Chapay!', you were immediately tickled and pinched as 'Chapay' or 'Chapayev', the name of the legendary red army cossack commander, is phonetically close to the verb 'pinch' in imperative mood.

I told my Russian joke to the French who were, like me, struck by the similarity of the pattern. But it can't be just a coincidence. There must be a source for the rhyme, in French or some other language. Does anyone know what it is?


The Russian novel 'Chapayev' and the 1930s film spurred a  host of jokes with the man as the central character. 
Russian version of this post is here.