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Kirill Gordeev - Blog Posts
Baby had a heart painted on his chest for Valentine's Day 🩷
RIP Russian Production of Elisabeth, you would've been way too powerful if you existed 🙏🏻
The photos are from the Hits of Broadway concert where certain Elisabeth songs were performed, many of which can be found on YT. We're not getting an official Russian Production anytime soon.
Things that have a very bleak possibility of happening, but I would go feral if they did 🫂
Serkan Kaya decides it's high time and becomes a regular on German stage, also reprises his role as Lucheni 🥲
A Russian Production of Elisabeth with Kirill & Vera, and Rostislav & Elena Gazaeva 🥲
A proper Musical Movie Adaptation of Elisabeth (in German) with the budget of Netflix's Die Kaiserin 🥲
We go back to the roots, bring back Original or 1st Vienna Revival staging & costumes with current Elisabeth cast 🥲
Michael Kunze admits he regrets the current changes, in conclusion GAY is back, so is Schwarzer Prinz 🥲
The official Russian Production of Roméo et Juliette / Мюзикл «Ромео и Джульетта» is set to premiere at the St. Petersburg Theatre of Musical Comedy (Muzcomedy)
This version is also directed/produced by KERO © Rómeó és Júlia (Hungary) so most likely it will be similar in staging to the one in Budapest Operetta Theatre.
Main Cast:
Romeo — Nikita Braga, Aleksandr Kazmin, Vladislav Getze
Juliette — Aleksandra Kasparova, Polina Belyaeva
Le Prince de Vérone — Kirill Gordeev, Dmitry Ermak, Ivan Ozhogin, Vladimir Yarosh
Mercutio — Ruslan Iskenderov, Nikita Slednev
Benvolio — Artem Mizhenkov, Andrey Suntsov
Tybalt — Stanislav Baksaraev, Maxim Kazakov
Frère Laurent — Rostislav Kolpakov, Ivan Ozhogin, Aleksandr Sukhanov
La Nurse — Agata Vavilova, Elena Gazaeva
The lineups along with the final cast will be updated here.
A (scary) fairytale about love for adults — "The Mistress of the Copper Mountain" musical
It's a relatively new Russian musical by Gleb Matveychuk (premiered in 2024), I watched it in flesh this week and felt the urge to tell someone about it. The Mistress of the Copper Mountain (Хозяйка медной горы) is a character of Ural folklore (made up by a writer Pavel Bazhov, though). She is a spirit of Ural Mountains, and, as any other spirit, a trickster rather than a main character of the stories, who is kind to some people and cruel to the other. The base of the musical are three stories of Pavel Bazhov: "The Mistress of the Copper Mountain", "The Malachite Casket" and "The Stone Flower", but the stories are fused and rewritten in a more suitable for a musical way: The Mistress is not a trickster anymore but a tragic character of a story, two other main heroes are a jewelry mason Danila and a daughter of the Mistress, Tanya. The plot of the Bazhov's stories exists only as some homages in the musical's plot, so I'll recap only musical's story:
Stone masons' dance The 19th century, Ural, Russian Empire. The peasants (read: slaves) have to work at copper mines that belong to a cruel and ruthless feudalist. But there appears a problem: an evil spirit that guards the mountains has killed almost all of young mine workers.
The Mistress of the Copper Mountain kills unlucky peasants because they have come to rob her mines. There is an insanely beautiful aria of the Mistress but for some reasons unknown the director of this musical doesn't want to record audio versions of songs, so I've found her aria sung by some other artist (not the one from this musical). I don't like it, but it's better than nothing: Youtube till 3:05.
To help people, a jewelry mason Danila volunteers to go to the mines and to meet an evil spirit. When they meet, Danila asks her to stop massacring peasants because they are slaves and can't do as they please. She asks him in return to spread her warnings to feudalists: they have to leave the mountain be or they will be killed.
Danila keeps his word and gets punishment for his audacity. While getting healed by a forest witch, he learns a story of the Mistress: she was born as a result of non-consensual sex of Slavic Hades and Persephone, unloved and cursed to be unloved till the end of her days. Besides, she has got the Stone Flower, an artefact, one glance on which can reveal all the secrets of the mason craft.
Danila feels pity for the Mistress but also wants to know the secrets of the mason craft. He tries to create his best work but feels that he lacks this sacred knowledge that only the Mistress has:
Danila laments on his lack of knowledge while making a sculpture of the Mistress.
There is a beautiful aria sung by Kirill Gordeev, but I have only a pirate audio: Bilibili, timecode 48:30
As soon as Danila fulfills his promise, the Mistress allows him to ask for reward. Danila asks her to show him the Stone Flower - the secret of the mason craft:
Unexpectant, the mysteries of the Universe reveal to him the perfectness of the Mistress and he falls in love with her:
She isn't happy about it because after one night of love he will turn into stone, but he is eager to sacrifice himself in order to give the unloved semi-goddess a spark of love, so they spend night together:
The Mistress gives birth to a girl and gives her away to people because she thinks her stone heart can't give her daughter enough love. One peasant woman becomes girl's stepmother, names her Tanya and gives her all her love:
Meanwhile, the Mistress lives all alone in her mountains and suffers from lovesickness to her deceased lover:
The aria of the Mistress in this part is here, in amateur version on YouTube, timecode 3:06. It's melodically the same as the duet of Danila and the Mistress before they spend night together, you can hear it in the pirate version on Bilibili, timecode 56:15. Although Tanya is loved by her stepmother, peasants find her strange and avoid her, and even want to hurt her, thinking she is an evil spirit herself. So her mother gives her magical dowry that wakes up her semi-goddess powers:
Then the Mistress punishes feudalists and their servants who tortured slaves, partly herself, partly with her daughter's hands.
This guy was eager to kill and torture peasants by feudalist's orders, so it was a pure pleasure to see this maniac get killed.
Tanya is extremely not happy about being used for the bloodshed, so she blames her mum for being a monster and herself for being a monster's daughter. I like this song a lot. And again, only pirate version: bilibili, timecodes 1:14:55 and 1:44:15. But the Mistress explains her about the curse and her stepmother says she has got a kind human heart of her father, so Tanya decides to take mother's curse to herself. Her kind heart will allow her to be benevolent and generous mistress of Ural mountains.
Tanya puts mother's cursed crown on. The dissipated curse releases the Mistress of the Copper Mountain and brings Danila to life. Now they can finally be together. The only one official audio from this musical is the final duet of the Mistress and Danila (Vera Sveshnikova and Kirill Gordeev are singers from the musical):
I liked that it was a pretty feministic story: "the lady in the fridge" is a man, the one who finds something beautiful in the monster and sacrifices himself in the name of love is man as well. It's pretty fresh. The main idea "love defeats everything" is not from Bazhov's stories but it's an immortal idea. And the plot of returning an evil creature to the light side by the power of love is typical Russian and sometimes Asian, so it can be something unusual for a Western viewer (for the sake of variety). At last, let me show you some pirate medley of video scenes from the musical:
P.S.: I also like the aria of the feudalist "Equality is a myth", but even pirate version is of almost unbearable quality. But it's here, Bilibili, timecode 31:00.