Lady with a Lapdog

The film is dedicated to the great Russian composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840-1893). It tells of the last twenty years of the great master’s life, of his friendship with Baroness von Meck, an outstanding woman of her time, who for many years was Tchaikovsky’s guardian angel. The film also includes retrospections of the composer’s childhood and adolescent years, with Tchaikovsky’s life poetically recounted against the background of fragments from his operas and ballets performed by the best Russian musicians.

The fire department is preparing for the New Year. Three activists of amateur performances decide to kidnap professional artists for a New Year's concert. A police captain investigates the kidnapping and listens to complaints from the “unkidnapped” artists.

The Bolshoi Ballet performs the Russian fairy tale of a Queen Maiden (Maya Plisetskaya), a stableboy (Vladimir Vasiliev) and a lucky horse (Alla Shcherbinina).

A musical-plastic film based on the jazz opera "Porgy and Bess" by George Gershwin is a dramatic story of the unhappy love of the legless Porgy and the young beauty Bess.

In Imperial Russia, Anna, wife of the officer Karenin, goes to Moscow to visit her brother. On the way, she meets charming cavalry officer Vronsky, to whom she's immediately attracted. But in St. Petersburg’s high society, a relationship like this could destroy a woman’s reputation. A Bolshoi Ballet adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s novel with choreography by Maya Plisetskaya, who also took on the titular role.

In Imperial Russia, Anna, wife of the officer Karenin, goes to Moscow to visit her brother. On the way, she meets charming cavalry officer Vronsky, to whom she's immediately attracted. But in St. Petersburg’s high society, a relationship like this could destroy a woman’s reputation.

The plot is based on the fate of the artist, reflected in art, which always accompanies people's lives, as well as dreams, pain or joy...

In 1969, the Moscow International Competition of Ballet Artists played host to some of the dance world's most legendary names. Twenty-one-year-old Mikhail Baryshnikov performs "La Bayadere" and a solo from Leonid Jakobson's "Vestris," while Ludmila Semenyaka dances a scene from "Giselle" and a modern jazz piece. Judging the competition are dance notables Agnes DeMille and Alicia Alonso and composer Aram Khachaturian.

A look at the rich history of the Mariinsky Theatre in the birth and growth of the Russian tradition in opera, music and ballet.