The Tale of the Priest and of his Workman Balda
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The Tale of the Priest and of his Workman Balda (Russian: Сказка о попе и о его работнике Балде) is a 1830 poem by Aleksandr Pushkin.
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[edit] Synopsis
The poem tells about a lazy priest who was wandering around the market looking for a cheap worker. There he met Balda (Балда in russian means a stupid or not very serious person) who agreed to work for a year without pay except that he could hit the priest 3 times on his forehead and cooked spelt for food. The priest of course agreed because he was very much of a cheapskate. But then after he had observed Balda at work, he saw that he was not only very patient and careful but also very strong. That worried the priest greatly and he started giving Balda impossible missions to accomplish.
The story ends when Balda gives the priest 3 blows to the forehead which resulting in the priest's losing his mind. The final line is something about "You shall not look for cheap merchandise".
[edit] The animated film
A scenario for an animated film of The Tale of the Priest and of his Workman Balda was written in the 1930s by the director Mikhail Tsekhanovskiy. However, he never completed the film. [1] The scene of the market from the tale stands alone as a classic of Russian animated films.
[edit] The music by Shostakovich
Early in 1933 the director Tsekhanovskiy contacted the young composer Dimitri Shostakovich and asked him to write music to accompany the film. Shostakovich wrote some music for the film in 1933-34 but, just as the film was never completed, Shostakovich never completed the score. After he died, his widow arranged to have the score completed by one of Shostakovich's students, Vadim Bibergan. The world premiere recording of the work was made by the Russian Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Thomas Sanderling and released in 2006, a century after Shostakovich's birth.
[edit] Portrayal of priest protested
On October 5, 2006 Sophia Kishkovsky reported in The New York Times that "In the northern city of Syktyvkar, the State Theater of Opera and Ballet of the Republic of Komi, a region once notorious as a center of the prison camp system, or Gulag, recently bowderlized a commemorative performance of 'The Tale of Priest and his Workman Balda' ...after the local diocese objected to the portrayal of the priest in the work." The resulting production was "reduced to a series of numbers..., none of which included the priest." [2][3]
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Liner notes by Manashir Yakubov for the recording of The Tale of the Priest and his Worker, Balda by the Russian Philharmonic Orchestra, Thomas Sanderling conductor (Deutsche Grammophon B0006507-02)
- Сказка о попе и о его работнике Балде Full text of Puskin's original poem, in Russian
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