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.
Postagens
