Restored Museum of Leo Tolstoy Opens in Chechnya

December 6 will see the reopening of Leo Tolstoy Museum in the Starogladovskaya Stanitsa of Shelkovsky Region, Chechnya Republic, in a new building after many years of neglect.
The opening ceremony is expected to be attended by the great writer’s descendant Vladimir Tolstoy, the director of the museum reserve Yasnaya Polyana.
Russia-InfoCentre

Fedoskino Miniature Painting

Fedoskino miniature is one of the types of traditional lacquered miniature painting. Painting is made in oils on papier-mache articles. This handicraft was developed in the late 18th century in the Fedoskino Settlement under Moscow. The art owned its appearance to popularity in Europe of snuffboxes, made of pressboard (i.e.papier-mache). The boxes were covered with black ground, varnished, and then painted with classical topics. Such snuffboxes became fashionable in Russia as well, and in the late 18th century a merchant Korobov organized their production in this country.
Initially the snuffboxes were decorated with prints, pasted on the lids and covered with transparent varnish. In the first half of the 19th century they gave place to oil painting miniatures. After the death of Korobov the factory was owned by his daughter for some time, and then went to merchants Lukutins, who owned it for 85 years. ...

Abandoned Wooden Miracles

You can look and marvel at these beautiful houses here.

Mario Del Monaco / Arkhipova - Carmen 1959

Mario Del Monaco and Arkhipova in Carmen at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow in 1959 singing the Flower Song.

Thank you Marat Safin!

chasemydreams

Sergey Dyagilev’s “Vision of Dance”

The Moscow Tretyakov Art Gallery joined the worldwide celebration of the centenary of Dyagilev’s “Russian Ballets”. The “Vision of Dance” exhibition showing 500 rarities from private collections and world museums has opened in the Tretyakov Gallery.
“Amaze me” was Sergey Dyagilev’s creative motto and he himself amazed the audiences combining new music, avant-garde scenery, unusual choreography and original staging in his performances. His ballets “The Holy Spring”, “Punch”, “Golden Cockerel” and “Afternoon of a Faun” became the legends of dance. “Russian Ballets” reflected the development of the XXth century art and its main feature – synthetism.
No exhibition can present all the talents of Dyagilev’s genius but the Tretyakov gallery tried to make its exposition interesting.
The vivid exposition comprises scenery, costumes, paintings and sketches, photos and video installations based on old documentaries showing the “live” plasticity of the dancers. For the first time the exposition collected 50 genuine costumes for the Dyagilev’s cast soloists, including Fokine, Pavlova, Nizhinsky, Karsavina and Geltser. Many design masterpieces survived miraculously, like the hand-painted costumes by Henri Matisse for “ The Nightingale” ballet or constructivism-designed costumes for “The Jester” ballet by Mikhail Larionov.
Voice of Russia

The Miracle of Perm - The Miracle of Perm

Is Moscow or St. Petersburg Russia's cultural capital? Neither one, apparently, now that Perm is seen as the hot new contender for the title. The city of a million people, near the Ural Mountains, previously known for its Soviet-era labor camps and weapons factories, is experiencing an astonishing transformation.
The sky hangs oppressively over the city like an enormous, rain-soaked towel. It is hard not to shiver in this Gulag Museum, the only one of its kind on Russian soil. And it's impossible not to feel pursued by the eerie shadows behind each cell wall, and by the flickering light in the dingy group toilet, which is little more than a hole in the ground surrounded by blowflies. The wind howls in the corridors. The penal camp, with its dungeons, watchtowers and restored guard quarters, seems as if it had never been closed.
Ghostly voices can be heard moaning, alternating between piercing and muffled. They are the sounds of another world, as if they had sprung from the pages of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novel "Notes from the House of the Dead. " "Russkoye bednoye, Russkoye bednoye," the voices say -- "Russian misery." ...

Photo Gallery: Perm's Cultural Renaissance