The Bolshoi traces it's history to 1776 when a standing opera company was organized in Moscow. The first opera shown in Bolshoi theatre was opera "life of tsar" (now "Ivan Susanin"). At later times operas by Dargomyzhsky, Serov, Tcaikovsky, Borodin, Moussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Rubinstein were produced here.

At the same time the Bolshoi company staged the best operas and ballets by West European composers-Mozart, Rossini, Weber, Verdi and others.

The bolshoi ballet company enjoys well-deserved fame as the world's finest. This is equally true of it's brilliant realistic style of perfomance and repertoire.

My favorite painter

One of my favorite artists is Rembrant is the greatest Dutch master, one of the supreme geneuses in the history of art. To this day the art of Rembrant remains one of the most profound witness of the progress of the soul in it's earthly pilgrimage towards the realisation of higher destiny. The son of the prosperous miller, Rembrant was born in Leiden in 1608. He studied at Leiden University, but his real vocation was painting. His rapid sugsess promoted him to move to the Amsterdam in 1631.

In 1632 Rembrant bought a splendid house, started a collection of paintings and rarities.

The universal artist dealt with many world subjects. Rembrant created a number of portraits and some group portraits which were traditional to the Dutch art. The best of them are "Anatomy lesson of Dr. Tulp" and "The night watch".

In 1655 Rembrant found himself in the midst of several financial troubles. At that period he painted "The Polish Rider", which is an allegory of the man's earthly journey.

Probably in 1669, the year of his own death, Rembrant painted his famous "Return of the Prological son", which stands at the ultimate peak of Cristian spirituality, illuminating the relationship of the self to the eternity.

The biblical theme was very important to Rembrant. He painted "Artakserks, Oman and Eshpir", "The Saint Family".

Rembrant was not understood when he was alive. He died in poverty. But it is the spirituality of his art that distinguishes Rembrant from his Dutch contemporaries making him the greatest artist of the world.

Art in Moscow

Speaking about art gallereys of Moscow we must mention the most famous gallereys.

The State Tretyakov gallery is one of the best known picture gallereys in Russia. It takes it's name from it's founder Pavel Tretyakov, a Moscow mercant. In the 19'th century Tretyakov began to collect russian paintings. He visitet all the exibitions and art studios and bought the best pictures. Little by little Tretyakov extended his interests and began to collect earlier Russian paintings. In 1881 Tretyakov opened in St. Peterburg his collection to the public, 11 years later he donated it to the city of Moscow. Since then the gallerey has received hundred paintings from other museums and private collections. The Tretyakov gallerey reflects the whole history of Russian paintings from 11'th century to the present day. The gallery contains such halls devon-ded to the works of 18'th century painters, as Рокотов, Левитский, Боровиковский. The first half of the 19'th century is reprisentive by brilliant paintings by Брюллов, Веницианов and others. The gallery has the best collection of "передвиженники" , such as Кромской, Перов, and such

great names as Суриков, Репин, Вознецов, Левитан.

Also I'd like to tell you about state pushkin museum of fine art. The building was built in Greek stile by Roman Klein in 1898 - 1912 to house a museum of fine art, founded of initiative of professor Ivan Cvetayev. Since 1937 it has be known as The Puskin museum of fine art. It has one of the worlds largest ancient collections of european art. Now the picture gallerey has over 2 thousands works of various schools of painting which enaibous us to understand and appreciate the variaty of staills over the centuries.

The Pushkin museum pereodically hald's exibition of the art of various countries and of individual outstanding artist of past and present.

Theatres, music halls and cinemas

Theatres are very much the same in London as anywhere else; the chief theatres ,music halls and cinemas are in the West End. If you are staying in London for a few days, you'll have no difficulty whatever in finding somewhere to spend an enjoyable evening. You'll find opera, balley, comedy, drama, revue, musical comedy and variety. Films are shown in the cinemas during the greatest part of the day.

The best seats at theatres are those in the stalls, the circle and the upper circle. Then comes the pit, and the last of all the gallery where the seats are cheapest. Boxes, of course, are the most expensive. Most theatres and music halls have good orchestras with popular conductors.

You ought to make a point of going to the opera at least once during the season if you can. There you can get the best of everything - an exellent orchestras, famous conductors, celebated singers and well dressed audience. But, of course, if you are not fond of music and singing, won't interest you.

At the West End theatres you can see most of the famous English actors and actresses. As a rule, the plays are magnificently staged - costumes, dresses, scenery, everything being done of the most lavish scale. Choose a good play, and you'll enjoy yourself thoroughly from the moment the curtain goes up to the end of the last act. Get your seats beforehand, either at the box-office of theatre itself or at one of the agencies. When you go to a theatre, you'll probably want to seat as near to the stage as possible. But if you are at the cinema, you may prefer to seat some distance from the screen. In fact, I would say, the further away the better.

Music in our life

Music - it art, reflecting validity in sound art images, one of the forms of public ideology. Having by powerful force direct emotional effect, music during of all history of man-kind plays a huge social, cultural and educational role.

Leading composers are connected to progressive public movements, life, interests and aspirations people. Each nations differs by peculiar national features. Folk music, being improved by creative efforts of many generations of the people, reaches a high degree of art maturity. On the basis of riches of national music professional musical creativity of composers is developed. Rejection of music from advanced ideas epoch of national culture, national roots of art leads to it's to decline and degeneration.

Idea emotional contents of music is passed through sound art images, implemented in musical sounds. The basis of music is the tune. According to the way of performance music is devided into 2 main branches: instrumental and vocal.

There are a great number of different styles of music, such as Jazz, Pop, Rock, Classic; and new musical directions. One of the new music directions is Rave. I prefer to listen hard-core and more quiet music such as Roxette and others.

Now days the number of music styles is growing, and every young people, which are fond of music can easily choose that style which appeals to them.

The use of computers

Just as television has extended human sight across a barriers of time and distance, so the computers extend the power of the human mind across the existing barriers.

Computers in medicine

Computers are one of the great importance in modern hospital. The chief use of computers is the storing and sorting the medical knowledge which has been equired in the last 50 years. No doctor can possible keep up with all discoveries. The only solution of the problem is store medical knowledge in a computer. Today there are medical computer centers were all existing knowledge of simpthoms of various dessieses and of their treatment is stored. Doctors feed data on simpthoms in the computer and get the nessesary information on current diagnostics and treatment.

Computers that can be learn

Ordinary computer can remember only the data stored in the hard disk. Now scientists have desighned machines, that are capable of learning from experience and remembarary what they have learned. Such a machine is capable of recognising objects without human help or control. Of course, they made many mistakes.

There is another similar machine which can look at letter alphabet a simple words and they “say” thought a loudes speaker what it has seen. The machine has as thoughtarn learning power.

Computers at the school

Information science with the ideas and message of processing and storing informations is of great importance today. That's why computer technology must be told in secondary school. The new subject “basic information science”, and “computing machine” was intreduste for the siner through the schools. The pupils teach computers to anlestigate school problems. Contact with the machine increases the interest in learning, makes them more serious about studing new subject. School computers are used not only for studing information science, but also examinations purposes. Young people who finish must be tried to operate computers.

Exploration

Christopher Columbus

300-400 years ago a great deal of the world was undiscoveried. But now there seems little more to explore, the wild north was conquered, the jungle was conquered too. And it seems that all the pages of the great book called “The Earth” has been filled in, but exploration still goes on.

In the 15th century people knew only 3 continents: Europe, Asia and Africa. They knew nothing about America. The man who was thought to be the discoverier of America was born in 1451 in Italy. His name was Cristopher Columbus.

Knowing that the earth was round he desided to reach India by sailing to the west. It was very difficult for him to organize an expedition as nobody wanted to help him. At last the Spanish government gave him some money. In the 1492 he sailed with 3 small ships in to the Atlantic ocean. They had been sailing for more than 2 months and at last they saw land. Columbus was certain that the lands he discoveried were part of India and he called these islands “The West Indias”. He made 3 voyagers to America. His last voyage was made in 1502-1504. After that, seriously ill, he remained in Spain until his death. He died believing that Cuba was part of Asia. Colum-buse's voyagers gave Europe first important knowledge of the new world. Many places have been named in his honour. America however was named after another explorer Amerigo Vespucci.

Americus Vespucius (or Amerigo Vespucci, as the name is spelled in Italian) was born in Florence, Italy, in 1454. He was in Spain at the time of Columbus' first and second voyages. In a letter, written in 1504 and printed in 1505, he claimed to have made four voyages, on the first of which, in 1497, he explored the South American coast. This would make him the first European to land on the American continent, for at that time Columbus had only reached the outlying islands. Most scholars reject Vespucius' version of this voyage. Vespucius perhaps did accompany a Spanish expedition that of Alonzo de Ojeda to South America in 1499, and in 1501 and 1503 he probably went with Portuguese expeditions. Probably he never commanded an expedition himself and, of course, was not the first person to set foot on the continents to which his name is given. Vespucius died in Seville, Spain, in 1512.

Learning languages

The problem of learning languages is very important today. Foreign languages are socially demanded especially at the present time when the progress in science and technology has led to an explosion of knowledge and has contributed to an overflow of information. The total knowledge of mankind is known to double every seven years. Foreign languages are needed as the main and most efficient means of information exchange of the people of our planet.
Today English is the language of the world. Over 350 million people speak it as a mother tongue. The native speakers of English live in Great Britain, the United States of America, Australia and New Zealand. English is one of the official languages in the Irish Republic, Canada, the South African Republic. As a second language it is used in the former British and US colonies.
It is the major international language for communication in such areas as science, technology, business and mass entertainment. English is one of the official languages of the United Nations Organization and other political organization. It is the language of the literature, education, modern music, international tourism.
Russia is integrating into the world community and the problem of learning English for the purpose of communication is espicially urgent today. Learning a foreing language is not as easy thing. It is a long and slow process that takes a lot of time and patience. But to know English is absolutely necessary for every educated person, for every good specialist.
It is well known that reading books in the original , listening to the BBC news, communicating with the English speaking people will help a lot. When learning a foreign language you learn the culture and history of the native speakers. One must work hard to learn any foreign language.

LONDON, Jack (1876-1916).

The novelist and short-story writer Jack London was, in his lifetime, one of the most popular authors in the world. After World War I his fame was eclipsed in the United States by a new generation of writers, but he remained popular in many other countries, especially in the Soviet Union, for his romantic tales of adventure mixed with elemental struggles for survival.

John Griffith London was born in San Francisco on Jan. 12, 1876. His family was poor, and he was forced to go to work early in life to support himself. At 17 he sailed to Japan and Siberia on a seal-hunting voyage. He was largely self-taught, reading voluminously in libraries and spending a year at the University of California. In the late 1890s he joined the gold rush to the Klondike. This experience gave him material for his first book, 'The Son of Wolf', published in 1900, and for 'Call of the Wild' (1903), one of his most popular stories.

In his writing career of 17 years, London produced 50 books and many short stories. He wrote mostly for money, to meet ever-increasing expenses. His fame as a writer gave him a ready audience as a spokesman for a peculiar and inconsistent blend of socialism and racial superiority.

London's works, all hastily written, are of uneven quality. The best books are the Klondike tales, which also include 'White Fang' (1906) and 'Burning Daylight' (1910). His most enduring novel is probably the autobiographical 'Martin Eden' (1909), but the exciting 'Sea Wolf' (1904) continues to have great appeal for young readers.

In 1910 London settled near Glen Ellen, Calif., where he intended to build his dream home, "Wolf House." After the house burned down before completion in 1913, he was a broken and sick man. His death on Nov. 22, 1916, from an overdose of drugs, was probably a suicide.

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