The Don Cossack Choir Serge Jaroff
The Don Cossack Choir Serge Jaroff was a group of former officers of the Russian Imperial Army, discovered singing in Çilingir, near Istanbul, where they had fled after the defeat of their army unit in the Crimea. They made their formal concert debut in Vienna, 4 July, 1923.
They were immensely popular in American and international tours in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. The men, dressed as Cossacks, sang a cappella in a repertory of Russian sacred and operatic music, army songs and folk songs. Cossack dancing was eventually added to their programs.
Read more about this topic: Serge Jaroff
Famous quotes containing the words don, cossack, choir and/or serge:
“If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willfulness; it is rooted in the fact that we not only have feelings but insist upon having them at whatever cost to ourselves.... The quality common to all the great operatic roles, e.g., Don Giovanni, Norma, Lucia, Tristan, Isolde, Brünnhilde, is that each of them is a passionate and willful state of being. In real life they would all be bores, even Don Giovanni.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“Silence is to all creatures thus attacked the only means of salvation; it fatigues the Cossack charges of the envious, the enemy’s savage ruses; it results in a cruising and complete victory.”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)
“O thou, with dewy locks, who lookest down
Through the clear windows of the morning; turn
Thine angel eyes upon our western isle,
Which in full choir hails thy approach, O Spring!”
—William Blake (1757–1827)
“Ah, my dear Madam, ah, “Mr.” Serge Solntsev, how easy it is to guess that the author’s name is a pseudonym, that the author is not a man! Every sentence of yours buttons to the left.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)