| The Master and Margarita | |
|---|---|
| Format | miniseries |
| Created by | Vladimir Bortko |
| Starring | Anna Kovalchuk Aleksandr Galibin Oleg Basilashvili Vladislav Galkin Sergey Bezrukov |
| Country of origin | Russia |
| No. of seasons | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 10 |
| Production | |
| Running time | 10 x 52 minutes |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | Telekanal Rossiya |
| Original run | December 19, 2005 – December 28, 2005 |
The Master and Margarita (Мастер и Маргарита) is a Russian television production of Telekanal Rossiya, based on the novel The Master and Margarita written by the Soviet writer Mikhail Bulgakov between 1928 and 1940.
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The director and screenwriter of this adaptation is Vladimir Bortko. It was his second attempt to make a screen adaptation of Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. In 2000 he had already been sollicited by the Kino-Most film studio, associated with the competing channel NTV, but at the last moment the company did not succeed to come to an agreement with Sergei Shilovsky, grandson of Mikhail Bulgakov's third wife Elena Sergeevna Shilovskaya and self-declared owner of the copyrights. In 2005, an agreement was found with Telekanal Rossiiya.
This TV-epopee of more than 8 hours was heavily criticized, or at least regarded with much skepticism. The first broadcast of December 19, 2005 was preceded by months of controversy in the media. Opponents feared that by the filming, the layered narrative of the novel and the complexity of the socio-political and metaphysical themes would be sacrificed to the popular demands of the medium television. Bortko had been following carefully the dialogues of the novel though, and the series became the most successful ever on Russian television. Most of the criticism stopped after the first appearance on screen. On December 25, 2005 40 million Russians were watching the seventh episode.
Despite the fact that the city of Moscow plays an important role in the novel, director Vladimir Bortko opted to shoot the scenes of the 30s in Saint Petersburg. “Saint Petersburg today is much more like Moscow in the Stalin period than Moscow today,” he said. The biblical scenes were shot in Bulgaria.
Different from previous screen adaptations, director Vladimir Bortko followed the novel meticulously. The setting of a TV-series appeared to be an ideal format to elaborate the complicated, multidimensional work with many different characters. “Bulgakov wrote the novel almost like a screenplay”, Bortko said.
The film is an adaptation of the novel The Master and Margarita written by the Russian author Mikhail Bulgakov. Three storylines are interwoven.
Despite the length of the TV series, a number of scenes and characters from the novel is not included in this adaptation.
01. The Master and Margarita - 2:04
02. Woland’s theme - 3:40
03. Sheherazade (*) - 9:34
04. Frühlingsstimmen (**) - 5:47
05. Maestro! Hack out a march!' (***) - 1:47
06. Love leaped out in front of us - 4:47
07. Do you like my flowers? - 2:40
08. The Execution - 5:20
09. Azazello’s Cream - 1:47
10. Invisible and free - 4:48
11. Waltz - 3:48
12. Sabbath - 6:55
13. The Great Ball at Satan's - 12:02
14. Garden of Gethsemane - 3:21
15. Even the moon gives him no peace - 4:01
16. More about love - 6:58
Total time: 80 min. All tracks composed by Igor Kornelyuk, except :
(*) Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov - Movement I: The Sea and Sinbad's Ship from the symphonic suite Scheherazade
(**) Johann Strauss jr. - Frühlingsstimmen - Waltz in B-flat major
(***) Dmitri Lensky - Song His Excellency from the vaudeville Lev Gurych Sinichkin
To be expected: