3 March 2015. Some of My Favourite Things… Georg Ots sings “Что так сердце растревожено” (What So Stirs the Heart)

G K Ots (1920-75), People’s Artist of the USSR.

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Let’s get away from the war for a moment… here’s one of the great Russian voices… G K Ots… singing one of the old romansy…

BMD

10 October 2013. You Can’t Make Up Shit Like This… Ex-Teacher Sent for Psychiatric Treatment for Treaty With Satan

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On Wednesday, a Russian court sentenced a former teacher to compulsory psychiatric treatment, as she drafted a contract with the devil in her own blood, asking him to destroy a beloved pupil’s relationship. Earlier, experts concluded that the ex-teacher, Lyudmila Osipova, was unaware of what she was doing and required psychiatric treatment. The court ruled that she should “undergo forceful medical treatment in a specialised psychiatric ward”. Osipova, a 41-year-old from Volgograd, developed an infatuation with a man in his 20s while working at a computer literacy class several years ago. On Thursday, Komsomolskaya Pravda reported that she tried to reconnect with the judo enthusiast after quitting her job in 2009 by joining a social networking website and posing as a model half her real age. When the man met Osipova in person, immediately, he turned down her overtures, saying that he already had a girlfriend that he intended to marry. The woman tried to break up the relationship by signing a contract with the devil that stipulated exchanging Osipova’s soul for a younger body, 100 million roubles (3.1 million USD. 3.22 million CAD. 3.3 million AUD. 2.3 million Euros. 1.95 million UK Pounds), a Jaguar and a Volkswagen, a helicopter, and some bodyguards. After that scheme failed, Osipova turned to the underworld for help and hired a contractor to help end her prey’s relationship. In a recorded conversation with a police officer posing as a contractor, she told him, “Put her on drugs for a couple of weeks in order to develop an addiction, gang-rape her too, and film it for him to see”. Osipova’s plan was for her target to be beaten so severely as to induce amnesia and then for her to nurse him back to health.

10 October 2013

RIA-Novosti

http://en.ria.ru/russia/20131010/184039695/Ex-Teacher-Sent-for-Psychiatric-Treatment-Over-Treaty-With-Satan.html

Editor’s Note:

It takes all kinds to make a world, schemers like Lyonyo and Gan, soulless guns-for-hire like John Boehner and James Carville, single-issue monomaniacs like Ted Cruz and Al Gore, and barmy nutters like this one. Such sorts make us forget that the majority of people are rather decent and sane… but we don’t “get into the paper”, do we? Sigh…

By the way, KP is the equivalent of the New York Post or The Sun. It’s “all the shit that’s fit to print”. It’s a rollicking read, and most of it’s true… there are all kinds of red-top tabs, and KP is one of the better of the lot. Besides, don’t you want to know who’s doing what to whom, you dirty-minded sinner, you?

BMD

Vladimir Putin’s Daughter Yekaterina Dating Young Man From Korea Who Works for Samsung Electronics

There isn’t much photographic evidence of VVP’s family… this is about it… he’s kept them so well out of the limelight that they can walk unrecognised in the streets of Moscow… that’s real humility (unlike the phoney American Sectarian variety). After all, he said, “There are things, I believe, which should not, in my position, at least, be shared with the public at large for everybody’s consumption because that would look like self-advertising or a political striptease”. Now, THAT’S a REAL Orthodox Christian!

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Editor’s Foreword:

There’s been a lot of search activity on “Yekaterina Putina”… here’s the best insider dope that I was able to find… I aims to please, kids…

BMD

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Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s younger daughter Yekaterina Putina (Katya), 24, is confirmed to be dating an employee of Samsung Electronics. Samsung officials said that he is a 26-year-old named Yoon who has been working at a local subsidiary of the Korean electronics giant in Moscow since he finished his study at University of Illinois last August. The ethnic Korean community in Russia has known for years that Katya and Yoon were dating. The couple had been friends since middle school days and has developed to dating relations since several years ago. Domestic media reported their dating around 2006. However, their friends and relatives have been mum about their date in consideration of Yoon’s position. It’s too sensitive to predict the male and female relationship. Furthermore, the relationship could affect political life of Prime Minister Putin, Katya’s father. Putin has two daughters, the elder of whom has married a Dutch youth, not a Russian. If the second daughter marries a Korean, her father might suffer severe political pressure, according to Yoon’s relatives and friends. Actually, Yoon’s parents and friends of the younger Yoon are reported to have been seriously embarrassed with the reports in South Korea, although they have not even been engaged. Yoon, the youngest son of former Admiral Yoon Jong-gu, 64, whose mother is a college professor, has been praised as an honest figure in the Russian society. Yoon attended an international school in Moscow for eight years when his father served at the Korean Embassy in the Russian capital from 1999. Later, Yoon studied at the University of Urbana-Champaign, with a double major in international studies (including international laws and international security) and politics. Yoon got a job at the local subsidiary of Samsung Electronics in Moscow, after returning from studying in the USA in August. In particular, Yoon likes basketball and dances well enough to outshine “B-Boy”. Actually, Yoon is reported to have met Katya for the first time at the age of 15 around July 1999, when he was crowned the champion at a dance party at an international school in Moscow. Yoon and Katya, who is fluent in five languages, are reported to have dated in Russia, the USA and Korea. While studying in Illinois, Yoon went to Russia in an exchange visit program and Katya is reported to have studied in the USA. Katya is also reported to have dated Yoon in South Korea in 2002, when the Korea-Japan World Cup soccer championship was held.

29 October 2010

The Korea Times

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/special/2010/10/182_75402.html

Lyubov Kazarnovskaya Wins Award from “Gramophone” for Recording of Romansy of Pyotr Chaikovsky

Lyubov Kazarnovskaya (1958- ), famous Russian operatic soprano

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“Triumph of the Victory”… not a performance by Ms Kazarnovksaya, rather a project conceived by her in honour of Victory Day… music by Verdi with footage of the Second Great Patriotic War… truly, a multi-talented artist.

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Another part of the “Triumph of the Victory”

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The British magazine Gramophone bestowed its prestigious Critic’s Award on the well-known Russian opera-singer Lyubov Kazarnovskaya for her CD anthology of romansy {“romances”, sentimental Russian love songs of the 19th and early-20th century: editor} by Pyotr Tchaikovsky. For the first time in the history of recording, all 103 romansy of Chaikovsky are performed by a single performer in a single multiple-CD album, regardless of the voice for which they were originally written, from bass to soprano! International experts gave a thumbs-up to this project of Ms Kazarnovskaya, one that she considers a highlight of her career. She considers Chaikovsky one of her favourite composers, and after completing work on the romansy project, she is going to record his opera, Pikovaya Dama (Queen of Spades).

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Ms Kazarnovskaya is convinced that “there’s no limit to the possibilities that we can take as singers, as creative personalities”. She stated this at a recent meeting with young musicians in Moscow. This was a unique master-class, during which she not only gave her audience advice on vocalisation and vocal technique, but, she also attempted to give the entire spectrum of the singer’s art, repeatedly stating that an operatic singer is, first of all, an artist, not merely “a package for a voice”.

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“Contemporary operatic performance requires much work. We can’t merely rely on the scenery and set poses, and then just sing. When I prepared for the role of Salome in Richard Strauss’ opera at the Teatro Santa Cecilia in Rome, I worked much on my dramatic presentation, giving particular attention to the choreography, because, in one of the episodes, Salome performs a twelve-minute dance”. Lyubov Kazarnovskaya is the first, and, thus far, only, Russian singer to portray this most complex role on the world operatic stage. She works with the leading operatic talents of our time, conductors, directors, and singers. She participates in many musical festivals and has initiated many unusual creative projects. This summer, her schedule is crammed with concerts in Italy and Germany, where she shall perform an original programme comprised of the repertoire of the famous French singer of the 19th century, Pauline García-Viardot, who had a romantic liaison with the famous Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev.

15 July 2008

Voice of Russia World Service

http://www.ruvr.ru/main.php?lng=rus&q=77175&cid=24&p=15.07.2008