RUSSIAN TREASURES TO SHINE IN FLORIDA

Chris Klein

The Romanov tsars probably did not know much about St. Petersburg, Florida. The city, founded by a Russian at the end of the 19^th century, was younger than Nicholas II at the time of the October Revolution, and did not begin to seriously grow until Khrushchev’s time.

Now St. Petersburg, part of a three-city metropolitan area of 2.5 million people, wants to become an international center of culture. The city already has an attractive, 24-hall Museum of Fine Arts and the biggest Salvador Dali collection in the world. To add to that, Mayor David Fisher plans to open the Florida International Culture Center, whose inaugural exhibition will be a Russian one. “Treasures of the Tsars” will be the largest collection of Russian art ever to be shown overseas.

As a result, a team of art experts from Florida was in Moscow recently, scouring the stores of the Kremlin Museum and the Tretyakov Gallery for works worthy of the first show.

“The Treasure of the Tsars” exhibit will deal with Russian art from the beginning of the Romanov dynasty, in 1613, to the revolution of 1917. A broad subject, to say the least, so Mr. Dilley, the project’s director and his crew have not had a lot of time to sightsee. Most days they have spent in a small office in the Kremlin, going over photos of icons, crowns and other crafts, choosing some to make the trip across the Atlantic. Ultimately the show will include some 250 works, and already they have chosen the crown of Mikhail, the first Romanov tsar, several valuable icons; and the lid of the sarcophagus of Dmitry, the seven-year-old tsar’s son who was murdered at the end of the 17^th century in the town of Uglich on the Volga.

Dilley says curators and museum directors have been welcoming and cooperative; on Friday, the director of the Tretyakov Gallery was due to take the group on a tour of the museum’s art in storage.

For the most part the group seems to be having fun. Mr. Dilley says he has spent his time here “falling in love with Russia”. Dilley, who calls himself a cul­ture junkie, has been looking for a good symbol for the marketing materials to be produced back in St. Petersburg.

“We’ve decided on the double-headed eagle,” he said, referring to the emblem of the tsars that has recently reappeared on Aeroflot jets. “It shows up over and over again in our research.”

Упражнение VI. Переведите тексты 4, 5, 6 с листа.

Текст 4

JEWELLERY BOOSTS GENEVA REPUTATION

Geneva’s reputation as the world’s leading market place for jewellery and small precious objects was confirmed during sales held in the week of May 16 – 20.

Among the highlights was the sale of two long-lost Faberge eggs, one of them for 1.2 million Swiss francs ($860,638), and Sotheby’s sale for 13 million Swiss francs of jewellery owned by the late Helene Beaumont.

Текст 5

QUEEN OPENS CROWN JEWEL SHOWCASE

LONDON (Reuters) – Queen Elizabeth II made a rare trip to the Tower of London on Thursday to open a new showcase for the crown jewels, Britain’s biggest tourist attraction.

“I am delighted to be here today on a visit which recalls for me my own Coronation Day,” she said before heading into the new Jewel House.

She last came to see the nine crowns, two orbs, sceptres, maces and other treas­ures when she opened the old jewel house in 1967 in a bunker at the tower that soon proved unable to cope with the crowds. The new, larger home, inside a vault in a former barracks, has steel doors, bullet proof glass cases and numerous hidden secu­rity devices. It is designed to receive up to 20,000 people a day. More than 2 million people a year are expected to pay $ 12 each for a visit. (2002).

Текст 6

QUEEN ELIZABETH’S VISIT SCHEDULED FOR OCTOBER

LONDON – Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II will travel to Russia in October, the first visit to the country by a reigning British monarch, Buckingham Palace said Friday.

A palace spokeswoman said the dates for the scheduled trip by the Queen and her husband the Duke of Edinburgh have been set as Oct. 17 to 20. Details have not been finalized.

Prince Charles made a highly publicized tour-day trip to the country’s second city of St. Petersburg in May.

That was seen as paving the way for the Queen’s visit to Russia, whose last mon­arch Tsar Nicholas II, a relation of the British royal family, was executed with his family in 1918.

Buckingham Palace said no reigning British monarch had ever visited Russia, al­though King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra dined with Tsar Nicholas II on the imperial yacht in June 1908 in the then Russian waters off Tallinn, now the capital of Estonia.

The visit is being described by the Fleet Street as the most important royal visit since the Queen travelled to China in 1986.

The royal family, dogged by image problems since the rift in 1992 between Charles and Diana and later on her tragic death, has used several lengthy foreign vis­its to stress the monarchy’s serious diplomatic role.

* * *

That was probably one of the reasons why Britain’s Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh in June 2003 invited V. Putin, the president of Russia to London.

V. Putin was the first Russian head of state in 80 years (after Nicolas II) to be person­ally invited to Great Britain by the British Crown.

Moscow Times, 2003

Упражнение VII.Переведите текст 7 с повторениями.

Текст 7

Какой подарок в России хотела бы получить Королева Великобритании? Вопрос этот активно дебатировался на Флит-стрит. Королева, пишет «Дейли мейл», сочла, что какой-либо российский орден – например, Дружбы народов, – ее не устроит, поскольку она итак уже имеет почти все, какие есть в мире, ино­странные ордена. Британская королева, информирует газета, «грациозно далазнать, что будет восхищена, если, возвращаясь на родину после визита, увезет с собой из России какое-нибудь изделие Фаберже, дабы пополнить коллекцию королевской семьи, начатую королем Эдуардом VII и королевой Александрой».

(2002)

Упражнение VIII.Прочтите тексты 8, 9, 10. Кратко передайте на англий­ском языке (10 – 12 предложений) основное содержание текстов (аннотирова­ние).

Текст 8

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