MAURICE JARRÉ - LARA SAYS GOODBYE TO YURI

LARA SAYS GOODBYE TO YURI

THE METROPOLITAN ORCHESTRA

SONGWRITER: MAURICE JARRÉ

COUNTRY: U. S. A.

FILMED: IN SPAIN

ALBUM: DOCTOR ZHIVAGO

LABEL: WARNER BROS

GENRE: SOUNDTRACK

YEAR: 1965

 

     Doctor Zhivago(/ʒɪˈvɑːɡoʊ/zhiv-AH-goh; Russian: До́ктор Жива́го, IPA: [ˈdoktər ʐɨˈvaɡə]) is a novel by Boris Pasternak, first published in 1957 in Italy. The novel is named after its protagonist, Yuri Zhivago, a physician and poet, and takes place between the Russian Revolution of 1905 and World War II.

         Owing to the author's independent-minded stance on the October Revolution, Doctor Zhivago was refused publication in the USSR. At the instigation of Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, the manuscript was smuggled to Milan and published in 1957. Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature the following year, an event that embarrassed and enraged the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

        The novel was made into a film by David Lean in 1965, and since then has twice been adapted for television, most recently as a miniseries for Russian TV in 2006. The novel Doctor Zhivago has been part of the Russian school curriculum since 2003, where it is read in 11th grade.

       "Lara's Theme" is the name given to a leitmotif written for the film Doctor Zhivago(1965) by composer Maurice Jarre. Soon afterward, the leitmotif became the basis of the song "Somewhere, My Love".

     While working on the soundtrack for Doctor Zhivago, Maurice Jarre was asked by director David Lean to come up with a theme for the character of Lara, played by Julie Christie. Initially Lean had desired to use a well-known Russian song but could not locate the rights to it, and delegated responsibility to Jarre. After several unsuccessful attempts at writing it, Lean suggested to Jarre that he go to the mountains with his girlfriend and write a piece of music for her. Jarre says that the resultant piece was "Lara's Theme", and Lean liked it well enough to use it in numerous tracks for the film. In editing Zhivago, Lean and producer Carlo Ponti reduced or outright deleted many of the themes composed by Jarre; Jarre was angry because he felt that an over-reliance on "Lara's Theme" would ruin the soundtrack.