The Golden Calf

opera after the novel of Ilf and Petrov
libretto by Evgeni Kostitsyn
in Russian and English

Opera "The Golden Calf" is based on the comic masterpiece of the 20th century - "The Golden Calf" by Ilf and Petrov. "The Golden Calf" novel was published in Russia in 1928. Several Russian movie versions exist and the least successful one has made Russian sales higher than "Harry Potter". Tikhon Khrennikov composed "The Golden Calf" opera in Russian. I will present "The Golden Calf" to the international audience for the first time in English.

It took ten years to compose the opera. In Russian and English, after my own libretto. 135 minutes. The number of syllables in Russian and English coincide. After completion of the opera I decided to make the feature movie.Also in Russian and English. The movie script and opera libretto coincide. It happened for the first time in the music and movie history. I also invented 'Kostitsyn Draft', a new script format to replace 'Final Draft' common in Hollywood. Unlike Final Draft Kostitsyn Draft makes music soundtrack an integral part of a script. An example of the script written in Kostitsyn Draft can be found here: http://www.kostitsyn.org/movie_golden_calf.php under "detail music and shooting instructions".

Some music material from "The Golden Calf" opera will be used for movie soundtrack.

I wrote my own version of "The Golden Calf", added, changed and removed characters, altered the plot. For example: my underground Soviet millionaire Alexander Korejko is interested in boys. His personality is divided and performed by two actors(singers): Korejko I and Korejko II. Zosia Sinitskaya, a girlfriend of Ostap Bender and Korejko, is in fact a male pretending to be a girl.

It is difficult to determine genre of "The Golden Calf". This is a Biblical story, detective, comedy, drama, theater of the absurd... The plot, involving gangs and racketeering, and the period of the 1920's, associates this work with "Public Enemy" and "The Godfather".

Targeted audience (based on analysis of Russian audience of "The Golden Calf") - everyone from 5 year olds and older regardless of race, religion, culture and education.

The opera is waiting to be premiered.

The high budget movie will feature major artists and different locations in the US.

In English

cover cast synopsis libretto 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212

In Russian

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