Dreams of love

In December 2008, at the Song of the Year festival, Pugacheva announced that her concerts in Moscow would be held in April 2009 . In the capital, the singer has not given solo concerts since 1998 . At a large press conference on March 5, 2009, Pugacheva noted that with these concerts she would open a farewell tour, after which she would complete her concert and touring activities ^[16] :

Concert activity must be completed. There are two main reasons for this. The first is that my health and heart do not really allow me to go back and forth. And the second reason is that after a series of operations that I had to undergo, the voice, of course, got hooked. And he cannot express those feelings and those intonations that I would like him to express. I want to say that I will not kiss the stage goodbye ... Indeed, I stop concert activity. And with difficulty, I guess, but still I will fulfill this duty of the anniversary tour. I am pleased to call this program "Dreams of Love." The tour includes Ukraine, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan ... Long list. Well, I’m People’s Artist of the Soviet Union ... I enjoy traveling through our former republics.

- Alla Pugacheva , singer

The name of the tour was determined by the phrase from the singer’s song “I am flying away” (music by Alexander Ivanov, lyrics by Sergey Abrashin): “I am flying away from the earth. Do not wake me, I beg: I see dreams. Dreams of love. " At a press conference, Pugacheva noted that the tour will also be called “From April to April” (referring to its time frame) ^[16] , but only one name was listed in the posters - “Dreams of Love”.

Pugacheva thoroughly prepared for the farewell tour: for the first time since 1984, she ordered sets and concert costumes. Boris Krasnov worked on the set design. He created a kind of “Planet of Alla Pugacheva” - a round obliquely cut podium throughout the stage, behind which a projection screen was placed, while all the faces of the scenery also served as projection planes. Inside the podium was another rotating cylindrical sector. Together, this created the illusion of a large iceberg, which subsequently becomes either an island, a field, or an apartment. During the last song, steps appeared on the podium, along which the singer ascended to the stars projected on the screen and disappeared into them. The total weight of the scenery and equipment was several tons; for their transportation to other cities during the tour, up to 5 heavy vehicles were required ^[1] .

Concert dresses were sewn by fashion designer Valentin Yudashkin : a traditional Pugachev black hoodie, pink and gray capes, as well as a long scarlet dress visually resembling a hoodie in which Pugacheva performed in the late 1970s . in the concert program “The Woman Who Sings”.

The set list of the program “Dreams of Love” included songs mainly of the last decade of the singer’s work, however, half of them (14 of 29) migrated from the previous concert program - “ We have arrived ”. In addition to new songs, it also included time-tested hits: “Call Me With You”, “Iceberg”, “Without Me”, “Return”, “Hello” and a completely new song - “Cherry Orchards”, which premiered at the first concert on April 7, 2009 in Moscow. Some of the compositions performed in the program are written by the singer herself. So, she is the author of the songs “Cherry Orchards”, “Love” and “Primadonna”, and also wrote music for the songs “Hello”, “People, People”, “The Candle Burned on the Table”, “Star” and the words for the songs “ Zone ”and“ People, People ”(co-authored with I. Reznik ). The media mistakenly reported that the poem "She Clung to Love", which Pugacheva read in the middle of the concert, was written by Bella Akhmadulina . In fact, it was written by the singer herself. The authorship of Pugacheva is indicated both in the concert credits and on the website of the Russian Authors Society .

There were some changes in the schedule of the tour. So, concerts in Kazan ^[17] and Cherepovets did not take place, and in Riga and Baku , scheduled for May 22 and July 12, respectively, were rescheduled to later dates. In Israel, the concert took place on September 12 in Tel Aviv , although it was originally planned for May 16 in Caesarea ^[18] . Scheduled for March 29, 2010, the final concert in Warsaw was canceled by Pugacheva herself, as she wanted to finish her concert activity in Bulgaria ^[19] .

Television was shot at three concerts in Moscow , as well as in Kiev and Baku . A television version of Moscow concerts was broadcast on the Russia-1 television channel on the anniversary of Alla Pugacheva on April 15, 2009 . She watched more than a quarter of the entire audience ^[20] . Despite this, “Dreams of Love” has not yet been officially published on DVD or other media.

Worked on the program:

• The author of the idea and the director - Alla Pugacheva
• Set Designer: Boris Krasnov
• Artist - Olga Shadrina
• Costume Designer - Valentin Yudashkin
• Lighting Designer - Cyril Lagoon
• Sound producer - Maxim Bogushev
• Choreographer - Grigory Zakharov
• Musicians - Recital group:
  • guitarists - Alexander Levshin , Alexander Vengerov
  • bass player - Anatoly Kulikov
  • drummer - Andrey Shatunovsky
  • keyboard player - Yuri Pogiba
• Backing vocals - Recital choral group:
  • Ekaterina Bachurina
  • Gayane Gawasheli
  • Lenisa Sayfulina
  • Irina Tikhnina
  • Valery Stronsky
  • Evgeny Malinin

Anatoly Lopatin , a studio sound engineer, who Pugacheva has been recording her songs since 1999, also participated in Moscow concerts. During the performance of the Pugachev song “Without Me”, he played the part on the accordion .

Bold letters indicate songs that are not included in the concert version of the concert. The duration of the composition is indicated by televersion.

Music critics generally favorably accepted Pugacheva’s farewell program. The main remarks concerned high ticket prices ^[29] , a small number of old, time-tested songs, and the performance of some compositions with a plus soundtrack.

She sang both old and new ... She sang not as loudly as then, but invariably in Pugachev's style - piercing and dramatic. Some admirers and connoisseurs then grumbled ... they say that they included insufficiently epochal masterpieces in the program on the occasion of farewell and summing up. But - what turned it on, it turned it on. Given that the masterpieces in Pugacheva’s work have accumulated over the past hundred years, the concert could have dragged on until the morning. There were such examples of “farewell” on our stage, but Alla chose the “light” version and, probably, she was right. The audience remained, according to a good English recipe, with a slight feeling of hunger. This is a very productive feeling ^[49] .

- Arthur Gasparyan , music critic

The first concert was like a rehearsal. The audience was amazed: Pugacheva was sluggish, she could barely move, the songs were chosen as if arbitrarily ... But the second and third concerts were already completely different. Pugacheva was absolutely accurate, logical in her movements and gestures. She no longer randomly moved along the proscenium and the scenery ... Yes, there were a lot of phonograms, but Pugacheva sang almost all the songs with her voice over the phonogram. And how she performed live “The candle burned on the table”! How many different techniques showed: and the head register, and a flat sound, and suddenly turned to chest notes ... The audience froze. It was absolutely unbelievable ... I think that Pugacheva is able to surprise endlessly ... This is a cosmic, fantastic person. And we need to talk about this very seriously and seriously explore ^[50] .

- Sergey Sosedov , music critic

Ticket prices vary by city. So, in Moscow they reached 50,000 rubles ^[51] (1,670 US dollars), in Novosibirsk - 35,000 ^[36] (1,190 US dollars), in Kiev - 3,500 hryvnias ^[52] (435 US dollars), Atlantic City - $ 739 ^[29] At the same time, according to media reports, the singer’s fee did not depend on the price and number of tickets sold and amounted to 180,000 US dollars for each performance ^[52] . Pugacheva herself did not comment on this information. The Forbes magazine in the Stars and Money 2010 ranking (the rating covers the period from July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2010 , that is 24 of the 37 concerts of the tour) indicated that the singer earned $ 4.5 million over the year . This allowed her to take second place in the composite popularity rating ^[53] .

The concerts of the “Dreams of Love” tour were put forward to receive two awards at once for the “ Soundtrack ” music award of the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper as “Event of the Year” and “Concert of the Year”. Despite the fact that the singer did not receive awards in these nominations ( Eurovision in Moscow became the “Event of the Year” and Mumiy Troll 's concert was the “Concert of the Year”), MK readers called her “Artist of the Year”. She scored 79,052 votes, almost doubling the runner-up of Alexander Rybak (48,291), Dima Bilan (45,307), as well as Bast (40,816) and Nikolai Baskov (23,415) ^[54] .

Comments

Sources

Vergelis O. Actress of the “burnt out” theater // AntiRANEVSKAYA. - Kiev: LP Media, "Rainbow", 2011. - S. 288. - ISBN 9789661642637 .