Frederick Low. Musical "My Fair Lady"

The director Alla Sigalova and the performers of the main roles spoke about the performance, rehearsals and joint work.

The Oleg Tabakov Theater (stage on Sukharevskaya) hosted the premiere of a musical and dramatic performance "My Fair Lady". Director and choreographer Alla Sigalova staged it based on Bernard Shaw's play "Pygmalion", as well as the famous musical "My Fair Lady" by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Lowe.

The premiere of the performance by the Oleg Tabakov Theater took place as part of the 19th Cherry Forest Open Arts Festival.

"Pygmalion" and "Oscar" for the author

Poor young flower girl Eliza Doolittle, who sells violets at the entrance to Covent Garden, has absolutely no idea of ​​good manners and social receptions. Her speech consists entirely of low-grade words, and she herself behaves like a shy animal. Chance or fate brings together on a rainy evening at the columns of the famous theater a flower girl, a respected London professor Henry Higgins and a linguist Colonel Pickering. The result of the meeting will be a bet between experts on pronunciation and dialects: in just a few months, Henry Higgins undertakes to teach any girl (yes, yes, this flower girl) so that she will be accepted as one of her own in any decent society. Yes, what is there, the girl will go to a court ball and there she will be mistaken for a duchess. Like Pygmalion from the ancient Greek myth from a "block of marble", Professor Higgins carved the perfect lady ... and shared the fate of the famous sculptor, falling in love with his own creation. However, Eliza was not at all like the submissive Galatea.

Bernard Show- one of the most popular playwrights in the English theater - nurtured the idea of ​​the play "Pygmalion" for about 15 years. Like Higgins, he was seriously interested in phonetics, and he chose the famous philologist Henry Suit, one of the founders of the English school of phoneticists, as the prototype of his hero.

The play was ready in 1912, and already in 1914 it was already in many theaters. Everywhere she was a huge success. In 1938, Shaw himself wrote the screenplay for the film of the same name, for which he received the Oscar. 13 years earlier, by the way, he was awarded the medal of the Nobel Prize in Literature. He basically refused money.

“Shaw wrote an absolutely amazing play, which contains so many symbols, signs and themes. I have loved this work for a long time, but in order to stage this performance, a combination of circumstances is important - Higgins must appear, Eliza must appear. And the situation is complicated by the fact that next to Higgins there should be his antipode - Pickering. This puzzle needed to be put together. It is complex, not every theater develops,” says director Alla Sigalova.

Legendary Broadway musical

Released in 1956 Broadway musical My Fair Lady by librettist Alain Jay Lerner and composer Frederick Lowe. The performance instantly broke all records in terms of popularity: tourists from different cities and countries came to see it, and tickets were sold out long before the performance itself.

True, Alain Jay Lerner slightly changed the plot: if, according to Shaw, the couple in love broke up forever, then in the musical they were waiting for a happy ending. By the way, the author himself, not wanting to console the audience, often quarreled with theater directors who wanted to give the story a different ending.

In the performance of the Oleg Tabakov Theater, the music and text remained the same as in the Broadway production. The theme of the relationship between a teacher and a student is very close for Alla Sigalova, who heads the departments at the Moscow Art Theater School and GITIS.

“This musical gave me the opportunity to talk about the teacher-student relationship. My task, as a teacher, is to discover in the student what he himself may not suspect. For this, it is important to desire it and do it passionately. Everything comes from passion and through passion,” says Alla Sigalova.

Audrey Hepburn, Tatyana Shmyga, Daria Antonyuk

In 1964 director George Cukor decided to transfer the famous musical to the screen. For the role of Eliza Doolittle, he invited the famous Audrey Hepburn, a style icon of its time. The film won eight Oscars, including best movie.

In Sigalova's production, she reincarnated as a flower girl from the slums Daria Antonyuk, winner of the fifth season of the musical show "Voice".

“I saw the movie, so I knew the story before. When we started rehearsing, I decided in principle not to watch the movie, so that it would be an independent, new story. But in order to catch the flavor of the era, and this is an aristocratic "beautiful era", I watched films about this time. And they inspired me, ”said the actress.

The history of the musical "My Fair Lady" in Russia began in the Operetta Theater in 1965. The performance was staged by Alexander Gorban, and the main role was played by Tatyana Shmyga.

Alla Sigalova refers to this story not for the first time. Last year, the Mikhail Chekhov Russian Theater of Riga celebrated its 135th anniversary with the production of My Fair Lady. Scenography in Riga and Moscow was done by one artist - Giorgi Aleksi-Meskhishvili. He designed the scenery on a revolving round platform: they turn into a dark London slum, then into a ballroom, then into Higgins' apartment or his mother's elegant house.

Seagalova and her team

Winner of the Golden Mask Alla Sigalova is known all over the world: she collaborates with La Scala and the Paris Opera, as well as many other foreign and Russian theaters.

Sigalova has been working with the Oleg Tabakov Theater for a long time. In 1993 she choreographed a production by Vladimir Mashkov in "Passion for Bumbarash", and in 2018, as a director, she presented Katerina Ilvovna based on Leskov’s work Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, which was awarded the Moscow Government Prize.

The costumes for the play "My Fair Lady" were created by Alla Mikhailovna's old friend, the famous fashion designer Valentin Yudashkin. Eliza changes clothes six times, gradually turning into a dazzling beauty. There are 200 costumes and 58 hats in the performance. Some of the costumes are made from a special Japanese nanofabric, the likes of which cannot be found in any theater in the capital.

The lead actress Daria Antonyuk is the owner of a voice with a range in three and a half octaves- was also staged thanks to Sigalova. A talented girl is one of Alla Mikhailovna's students at the Moscow Art Theater School. She immediately agreed to the role of Eliza.

“When we analyzed the play, I found a lot in common between Eliza and myself. She is contradictory, temperamental, sometimes not quite coping with strong feelings. Love, passion, curiosity, she desires change and desperately resists it, trying to maintain her self-esteem. As she understands it, of course,” said Daria Antonyuk.

Professor Henry Higgins, who took up the training, was played by the Honored Artist of Russia, a student of Oleg Tabakov Sergey Ugryumov.

“Higgins has been struggling with his feeling for a long time, and constantly trying to get rid of it, it is difficult for him to admit it to himself. But when he realizes that Eliza has become completely independent and is going to leave completely, it is at this moment that he wants to stop her, to confess his love. But Eliza says: “All the best, we will not see each other again,” said Alla Sigalova.

The professor's friend, Colonel Pickering, played Vitaly Egorov. He sympathizes with his hero, who from the very beginning felt sorry for Eliza and sympathized with her.

“The colonel is a lonely man, also a bachelor, to some extent an esthete, studying Sanskrit, linguistics. He sincerely sympathizes with this poor girl during the experiment they started with Higgins. But unlike Higgins, he always treated Eliza the way a gentleman should treat a lady, even before any metamorphosis, ”says the artist.

The main thing is humor

rehearsed three months. For guest artist Daria Antonyuk, this is the first experience of working at the Oleg Tabakov Theater.

“I am very impressed with the team. Here, every person is so desperate to help you, even without knowing you very much. There was no such period that we got used to each other, I had the feeling that I had known these people for a very long time. It is amazing and very rare that, in fact, strangers have received you so warmly, ”she recalls.

All arguments at rehearsals usually ended in jokes. This mainly concerned two friends and classmates - Sergey Ugryumov and Vitaly Yegorov.

“When there were some disagreements, we translated them into humor. It’s just that at some point, he and I realized that her patience was about to run out, and we started joking. In general, she likes our tandem, sometimes we made Alla Mikhailovna laugh, ”said Vitaly Egorov.

By the way, he already worked with Alla Sigalova - in "Passion for Bumbarash". He believes that external fragility and grace are combined in it with the strong and persistent character of a true professional.

“Oleg Pavlovich Tabakov said that the performance cannot be released if there is no love and no suitable company. And Alla Sigalova created just such a team due to her internal reserves, strength, courage, patience, ”Vitaly Egorov emphasized.

The performance can be seen June 18, 19 and 20. In addition, a new season will open in the theater in the fall.

“For the first time I see an honest producer!” - exclaimed Bernard Shaw, when Gabriel Pascal, in response to the question of how much money he had, took some change from his pockets. Pascal asked the famous playwright for permission to stage a musical based on his play. If Shaw had not been captivated by Pascal's honesty, the world probably would not have seen the magnificent musical "My Fair Lady".

This story perfectly matches the spirit of the play that Pascal drew attention to - "Pygmalion": is it really everyone in the world who decides money, what happens if you support a person who has no money? The playwright puts these eternal questions in the form of a plot that echoes the ancient myth set forth in Ovid Nason's Metamorphoses: the sculptor Pygmalion fell in love with the statue of a beautiful woman he created, and the goddess of love Aphrodite, condescending to his prayer, breathed life into it ... In Shaw's play everything looks far from being so lofty - after all, the action takes place not in time immemorial, but in Victorian England. Poor girl Eliza Doolittle - ugly, dressed in a blackened straw hat and "red coat", with "mouse-colored" hair - sells flowers on the street, but the income brought by this occupation does not allow her to get out of poverty. She could improve her situation by getting a job at a flower shop, but she is not hired there because of the wrong pronunciation. To correct this shortcoming, she turns to Professor Higgins, a famous phonetician. He is not inclined to accept a beggar girl as a student, but colleague Pickering, feeling sympathy for Eliza, offers Higgins a bet: let the professor prove that he is really a highly qualified specialist, and if six months later he can pass the girl off as a duchess at a secular reception, let him consider himself the winner ! The "experiment" turns out to be difficult for both the teacher and the student, who suffers from Higgins' arrogance and despotism, but their efforts are crowned with success: the young aristocrat Freddie Ainsworth Hill falls in love with Eliza, and at the ball where the professor takes her, representatives of high society accept without hesitation her for hers. But the girl not only got prettier in self-care, learned good manners and correct pronunciation - she gained self-esteem, she suffers from the dismissive attitude of Higgins, who cannot understand the tragedy of the situation: she no longer wants to return to her former life and has no money, to start a new one. Offended by the lack of understanding of the professor, she leaves his house. But Eliza's training has transformed not only the girl herself, but also Higgins: the old bachelor discovers that he is "used" to Eliza, that he misses her. Listening to the recording of her voice on the phonograph, he suddenly hears the real voice of the returned Eliza.

This is the story producer Gabriel Pascal decided to embody in the musical. To create music, he turned to two well-known Broadway authors - composer Richard Rogers and librettist Oscar Hammerstein, but both were refused (because, as already mentioned, he had little money), but young authors agreed - composer Frederick Lowe and librettist Alan Jay Lerner. Shaw's play's plot underwent some changes when it was reworked into a libretto. The afterword was not taken into account, which announced the future fate of Eliza (marriage to Freddie, opening his own store) - this was in the spirit of Shaw, who was skeptical about romantic love, but the Broadway audience would not accept such an ending. In addition, the life of the opposite "poles" of society - the inhabitants of the poor quarter and the aristocrats - was shown in more detail than Shaw's. The structure of the work, entitled "My Fair Lady", is close to a musical comedy. Lowe's music is full of dance rhythms - there is a polka, a waltz, a foxtrot, and even a habanera and a jota.

Even before the completion of the work, the well-known actress Mary Martin, who performed on Broadway, became interested in the work of Lowe and Lerner. After listening to the finished material, she exclaimed: “How could it be that these sweet boys lost their talent?” These words plunged Lerner into despair - however, not for long, and they were not going to invite Martin to the role of Eliza anyway.

The premiere of "My Fair Lady", held in March 1956, was a true triumph. The popularity of the musical was fantastic, and Lowe was so shocked by the success that he offered coffee to people who had been queuing for tickets since the night. In 1964, the musical was filmed and won an Oscar in eight categories - including the musical one, but received an award ... the person who arranged the music for the film adaptation, and Frederick Lowe was not even nominated.

In 1965, the musical was staged for the first time in the USSR, at the Moscow Operetta Theatre. The role of Eliza was played by Tatyana Ivanovna Shmyga.

"My Fair Lady" is the story of the flower girl Eliza Doolittle, who led a lonely, inconspicuous life until she met Professor Higgins, who set himself the goal of making her a real lady. The day will come when Eliza will be presented to the Queen of England herself...

Musical "My Fair Lady" at the Operetta Theater

Musical in 2 acts based on the play by B. Shaw "Pygmalion"

For the "Moscow Operetta" this performance was truly epoch-making. It was first staged in 1964, and it was from that moment that the history of the musical began in Russia. The role of Eliza Doolittle, who made Audrey Hepburn famous, was played by the brilliant Tatyana Shmyga.

In the current production, the audience also expects an excellent cast, wonderful music, which has already become a classic of the genre, original choreography, bright lighting effects. The famous professor Henry Higgins makes a bet with his friend that he can teach the illiterate flower girl proper speech and social manners, and then pass her off as a real lady. Sparkling humor, funny situations, a dirty little girl turns into a princess before the eyes of the audience, and a convinced bachelor turns into a lover.

The comedy musical "My Fair Lady" has long entered the treasury of world musical culture. He made his Broadway debut in 1956 and has been fantastically popular ever since. The film version of the play starring Audrey Hepburn won eight Oscars. Thanks to the film, the wonderful melodies of Frederic Low became known and loved all over the world.

About the performance

The action takes place in London at the beginning of the 20th century. The eminent linguist Henry Higgins makes a bet with his colleague - he can turn an uneducated florist into a real lady who will be indistinguishable from a duchess. The choice falls on Eliza Doolittle - a rustic girl with a rough street accent. For several months, he teaches Eliza high society manners and pronunciation, imperceptibly being carried away by her. The plot of Shaw's play echoes the ancient Greek myth of Pygmalion, a sculptor who created a beautiful statue of a girl and fell in love with his own creation.

"My Fair Lady" first appeared on the stage of the Operetta Theater in 1964. Charming Tatyana Shmyga shone in the title role. The contemporary production also boasts a strong cast, laconic stage design, and colorful costumes. Thanks to many comical situations and music permeated with dance motifs, the performance envelops the viewer in a light, joyful mood.

Creators and artists

Music - Frederick Lowe, American composer, Oscar and Golden Globe winner.

Text and poetry - Alan Jay Lerner, an American poet and librettist, together with Frederick Low created the musicals Brigadoon, Camelot, Gizhi.

Stage director - Alexander Gorban, collaborated with many theaters throughout Russia, staged the musical "Violet of Montmartre" by I. Kalman in Mosoperetta.

Choreographer - Sergey Zarubin, actor of the Satyricon Theater, Honored Artist of Russia.

Artists: Anatoly Isaenko and Svetlana Sinitsina

Roles are played by: Olga Belokhvostova, Alexander Markelov, Vasily Remchukov, Dmitry Shumeiko, Ella Merkulova.

Tickets for "My Fair Lady" at the Operetta Theater

To buy tickets for the musical "My Fair Lady" in Moscow, use our convenient ticket service. We offer the highest quality service and the fastest delivery.

Why choose us:

• Quick and easy ordering - by phone or online.
• Large selection of payment options - cash, card or bank transfer.
• Free delivery of tickets in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
• Polite consultants, always ready to help.
• Group discounts (for companies from 10 people).

"My Fair Lady" at the Operetta Theater is a sparkling comedy about social prejudice, a miraculous transformation and unexpected love. Forget about everyday life and immerse yourself in the story of the charming and spontaneous Eliza Doolittle.