In January of that year (1996) I got a phone call from Sarah Caldwell. She was in Yeketerinsburg, a large industrial city east of the Urals, on the edge of Siberia.



She told me that she was guest conductor of their symphony orchestra and that she was rehearsing a Symphonic Drama -- not an Opera, a play with musical accompaniment. It was a version of Eugene Onegin composed by Prokofiev but banned by Stalin’s boys and never before performed. Could I do something about it?

I asked, “Can we film the actors?” … “Yes”. “Can we film the musicians?” … “Yes”. “Do you have any money?” … “No”.



So, since Valerie was dedicated to Karine’s care, she suggested that I work with my daughter Victoria who happened to be visiting. So we set off with Vincent Blanchet our super-sound friend, and MIT agreed to send a Russian graduate student, Natalia Tsarkova, so that at least one of us spoke Russian. She was wonderful. I got an instant grant from an old friend who wishes to remain nameless. That paid our airfare and off we went with our silly little digital cameras to film a huge production. Ten days and nights of sheer joy in shooting. I have never been so close to the inner disputes and workings of a major production; at least, not with a camera in hand and videoing with superb sound quality... It would cost millions of dollars to do such a thing in any European country or in the USA. Unions, actors rights, musicians rights, composers rights and so on ad nauseum. We have virtuously destroyed the possibility of ever again recording any aspect of the creative process. It was possible in Russia at that time of transition but probably no longer today.



Again, all our old rules were obeyed; no interviews, no lighting, no radio microphones or lapel-mikes, nothing repeated for our benefit... Our team was mobile, alert, sensitive to every nuance. I had never worked with Victoria before and it was a joy. We had differences at first -- I didn’t like her using the side viewfinder so much -- but we worked it out. Our Russian-speaking Latvian graduate student from MIT, Natalia Tsarkova, was such a superb translator that Miss Caldwell took up a lot of her time, but she made an essential contribution especially in that she alone understood the conflicts in detail and caught essential moments on camera.



Near the end, when we were covering the actual performances, Valerie called me from France with bad news. Victoria’s very very close friend and collaborator, Jonathan Larsen, had died of a heart ailment the day before his first musical, RENT, opened on Broadway to rapturous reviews… I chickened out and passed the phone to Victoria, who learned the hard way. But, in the ancient tradition of the Theater, she stuck it out and finished the shoot before returning poste haste to New York.

Throughout this shoot, Vincent was recording audio in parallel with our cameras, classic stereo sound which I assumed I would use in the final cut. All three of our digital cameras -- two Sony 1000’s and one single-CCD Sony -- carried Vincent’s double-track microphones combining directional on one track and cardioid on the other. The segment that I show here is all made with the on-camera mikes. Wonderful. When you are close to the harp you hear it that way which I think is as it should be.



Back in Paris, I bought my first Mini-Digital editing tape decks. The people at Sony wanted to sell me something more expensive and said that these decks were only accurate to within five frames. I took them home anyway and discovered that they are frame accurate! I did the basic edit tape-to-tape on this equipment. Radius Edit DV and the computer came later.



It has been a long time since I used a dissolve, or even a fade-out or fade-in for that matter. I am happiest with straight cuts, not only with picture but with sound too. I don’t want or need all these fancy wipes and effects. We can edit here at home. The quality remains superb and what is very important to us is that we can re-edit and make completely different versions of a film with no extra cost or trouble. Something that you simply could not do with film. I am delighted with the result.



I think A Musical Adventure in Siberia is one of the best films ever made on the putting together of a complex musical work. When I showed it to Marina Karetnikova, a Russian teacher of Art History in Boston, for whom I have enormous respect, she said of the acting: “Ricky, it is like Shakespeare acted by truck drivers!” ...which I thought was an interesting idea, but that is not what she meant. More importantly, when I showed the finished film to Sarah Caldwell in Cambridge, Massachusetts, she was far from pleased and said something like: “ You can’t show this! I don’t like the way I waddle....” I told this to an old class-mate who is a Lawyer and he responded: “The film was agreed to in France and made in Russia... She doesn’t have a leg to waddle on!” So, I showed it to an old friend who worked for WGBH, the Boston Public Broadcasting Station, and his response was something like: “Oh no, we don’t need it. We already have the Boston Pops program...” And others, BBC, Arte etc. were equally negative, so I gave up and acknowledged another final defeat.



However, this film was doing very well at private and festival screenings. Then a miracle occurred. Artemis Willis -- a close friend of my daughter Elspeth who had done much work with Miss Caldwell on other Operas -- organized a public screening at the Museum of Fine Arts, in Boston. Furthermore, she invited Miss Caldwell to the screening and prepared a release form for her to sign.



I was staggered! My Gad! She’ll come with lawyers! But no. It turned out to be a night of pouring rain but the house was nearly filled and, low and behold, there was Sarah Caldwell. At the conclusion of the film both Miss Caldwell and I received a standing ovation! She loved it and wept when we greeted each other. Then, she signed the release. It was done! She died a few weeks later and this film will be her memorial.