Marina Tsvetayeva

From high atop the beautiful town of Alexadrov in the lovely Vladimir oblast, it's time once again for Sadko's World of Music. The role of Sadko today is being played by Yaroslav the Wise . The role of the Bobbsie Twins is being played by Donna and Wanda Poniatovski . The role of Ken Moss is being played by Jeff Beck. In the third half of the program, the role of Lenny the Listener will  be played by Miles Standish. Our featured great Russian writer today is Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva  (8 October 1892 – 31 August 1941) was a Russian and Soviet poet. Her work is considered among some of the greatest in twentieth century Russian literature.She lived through and wrote of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Moscow famine that followed it. In an attempt to save her daughter Irina from starvation, she placed her in a state orphanage in 1919, where she died of hunger. Tsvetaeva left Russia in 1922 and lived with her family in increasing poverty in Paris, Berlin and Prague before returning to Moscow in 1939. Her husband Sergei Efron and her daughter Ariadna Efron (Alya) were arrested on espionage charges in 1941; and her husband was executed. Tsvetaeva committed suicide in 1941. As a lyrical poet, her passion and daring linguistic experimentation mark her as a striking chronicler of her times and the depths of the human condition.
MARINA:
Marina and The Diamonds – Primadonna – Electra Heart
Robert Russell Bennett – Victory at Sea - 1992 Remastered, same
John Medeski – Luz Marina – A Different Time
The Original Broadway Cast of By The Beautiful Sea – Overture, The Sea Song, Coney Island Boat, Throw The Anchor Away  – By The Beautiful Sea: Music From The Original Broadway Cast
London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) – Sea Pictures, Op.37: I. Sea Slumber-Song, II. In Haven (Capri),   III. Sabbath Morning at Sea, IV. Where Corals Lie, V. The Swimmer
Violons du Roy, Les – Les illuminations, Op. 18: V. Marine Benjamin Britten – Britten: Les Illuminations
Andre Previn – Four Sea Interludes Op. 33a (from Peter Grimes): I. Dawn (Lento e tranquillo),   II. Sunday Morning (Allegro spiritoso),   III. Moonlight (Andante comodo e rubato),   IV. Storm (Presto con fuoco)
Marina Tsvetayeva – If Fate Threw Us Together, Various Artists – Elena Kalacheva, : If Fate Threw Us Together
TSVETAYEVA:
Dmitri Shostakovich : 6 Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva, op. 143a I. My poems Ortrun Wenkel, contralto, Concertgebouw Orchestra

Алиса Фрейндлих: Гори, гори моя звезда

Schnittke Alfred (1934 –1998 ) Three Poems by Marina Tsvetaeva op. 36
http://classical-music-online.net/en/production/34237

Soundtrack/Cast Album – I Enjoy Being A Girl, You are Beautiful – Flower Drum Song - The New Broadway Cast Recording
Gianandrea Noseda – Skaz o kammenom tsvetke (The Tale of the Stone Flower), Op. 118: Prologue 1: The Mistress of the Copper Mountain Prologue 2: Danilo and his work Act I Scene 1: Danilo meets his fellow villagers Act I Scene 1: Scene and duet of Katerina and Danilo– Prokofiev: Tale of the Stone Flower (The)

Tsvetaeva's husband was developing Soviet sympathies and was homesick for the Soviet Union. Eventually, he began working for the NKVD, the forerunner of the KGB. Alya shared his views, and increasingly turned against her mother. In 1937, she returned to the Soviet Union. Later that year, Efron too had to return to USSR. The French police had implicated him in the murder of the former Soviet defector Ignaty Reyss in September 1937, on a country lane near Lausanne, Switzerland. After Efron's escape, the police interrogated Tsvetaeva, but she seemed confused by their questions and ended up reading them some French translations of her poetry. The police concluded that she was deranged and knew nothing of the murder. Later it was learned that Efron possibly had also taken part in the assassination of Trotsky's son in 1936. Tsvetaeva does not seem to have known that her husband was a spy, nor the extent to which he was compromised. However, she was held responsible for his actions and was ostracised in Paris because of the implication that he was involved with the NKVD. World War II had made Europe as unsafe and hostile as USSR. In 1939, she became lonely and alarmed by the rise of fascism, which she attacked in Stikhi k Chekhii ("Verses to the Czechia" 1938–39).

In 1939, she and her son returned to Moscow, unaware of the reception she would receive.  In Stalin's USSR, anyone who had lived abroad was suspect, as was anyone who had been among the intelligentsia before the Revolution. Tsvetaeva's sister had been arrested before Tsvetaeva's return; although Anastasia survived the Stalin years, the sisters never saw each other again. Tsvetaeva found that all doors had closed to her. She got bits of work translating poetry, but otherwise the established Soviet writers refused to help her, and chose to ignore her plight; Nikolai Aseev, who she had hoped would assist, shied away, fearful for his life and position.
Efron and Alya were arrested for espionage. Alya's fiancé, was actually an NKVD agent who had been assigned to spy on the family. Efron was shot in 1941; Alya served over eight years in prison. Both were exonerated after Stalin's death. In 1941, Tsvetaeva and her son were evacuated to Yelabuga, while most families of the Union of Soviet writers were evacuated to Chistopol. Tsvetaeva had no means of support in Yelabuga, and on 24 August 1941 she left for Chistopol desperately seeking a job. On 26 August, Marina Tsvetaeva and poet Valentin Parnakh applied to the Soviet of Literature Fund asking for a job at the LitFund's canteen. Valentin Parnakh was accepted as a doorman, while Tsvetaeva's application for a permission to live in Chistopol was turned down and she had to return to Yelabuga on 28 August.
On 31 August 1941, while living in Yelabuga (Elabuga), Tsvetaeva hanged herself. She left a note for her son Mur: "Forgive me, but to go on would be worse. I am gravely ill, this is not me anymore. I love you passionately. Do understand that I could not live anymore. Tell Papa and Alya, if you ever see them, that I loved them to the last moment and explain to them that I found myself in a trap." Many of her friends felt the blame was theirs, Pasternak felt that he had personally failed her. Soviet poets often preferred to blame her desperation on her fellow emigres in Paris and Berlin. Writers further west tended to view Efron's and Alya's arrest as the cause, which may have left Tsvetaeva feeling burdensome to her son. Alya blamed Mur directly. There have always been rumors that Tsvetaeva's death was not suicide. On the day of her death she was home alone and it is alleged that NKVD agents came to her house and forced her to commit suicide. Kudrova in The Death of a Poet: The Last Days of Marina Tsvetaeva posits three causes for Tsvetaeva's death: that her sister Anastasiia insisted that she kill herself to save her son, that she suffered from mental illness, or that she feared recruitment by the local NKVD. Tsvetaeva was buried in Yelabuga cemetery on 2 September 1941, but the exact location of her grave remains unknown.
In the town of Yelabuga, the Tsvetaeva house is now a museum and a monument stands to her. Much of her poetry was republished in the Soviet Union after 1961, and her passionate, articulate and precise work, with its daring linguistic experimentation, brought her increasing recognition as a major poet.