Ebook, with notes, images, an Afterword, and links to further resources. $3.95 USD. PayPal and major credit cards accepted. Format: PDF
Kindle edition
My translation of Pushkin’s Mozart and Salieri was first published in 1984 in the Russian Language Journal. I put it up on my first website in the late nineties, and since then it has been reproduced numerous times elsewhere on the web, both with my permission and without. During 2008-2010 it had three separate performances by people in three different countries who found it online and asked permission to perform it.
This response encouraged me to finally translate the other three “little tragedies” (the title is not Pushkin’s), which I did in 2009-2010. I have also composed music for the two songs in the final play, A Feast During the Plague (sheet music for those will be available here soon).
Since online copies of Mozart and Salieri have appeared in various formats, and since there have been some revisions to the text, I no longer have an HTML version of the text here. A PDF with correct formatting, incorporating the latest changes, is available as a free download. It may be freely distributed for non-commercial purposes.
Those interested in performing any of these translations, or in obtaining the musical scores for the song settings for Feast During the Plague, should contact me directly by email.
Mozart and Salieri performance history
March 12, 1984 – The Performance Network, Ann Arbor, Michigan (script-in-hand)
February 15-17, 2008 – Symphony Hall, Boston (pre-concert staged reading for each of three performances by the Handel and Haydn Society Orchestra)
February 4-5, 2010 – The Space, London, UK (multimedia adaptation by El Pajarito theatre company)
March 26, 2010 – Zayed University, Abu Dhabi, UAE (fully staged)
October 30, 2010 – Calgary, Alberta (supertitles for concert performance of Rimsky-Korsakoff’s operatic setting by the Calgary Philharmonic)
poster shows originally scheduled performance date
Videos that use these translations
Video Artists International DVD of Bolshoi productions of Rimsky-Korsakoff’s opera of Mozart and Salieri and Dargomyzhsky’s setting of The Stone Guest. Both works have subtitles adapted from these translations
This video playlist shows the entire Mozart and Salieri sequence from the 1979 Soviet TV film malenkie tragedii (The Little Tragedies), dir. M. Shveitser, with subtitles adapted from my translation and inserted by myself. There are five segments, totalling approximately 34 minutes.