Svyatoslav Belza

Svyatoslav Igorevich Belza (Russian: Святосла́в И́горевич Бэ́лза, born April 26, 1942, died June 3,2014) was the Soviet/Russian literary and musical scholar, critic and essayist; later (from the late 1980s onwards) a prominent TV official, then author and presenter of programs and projects aimed at popularizing classical music, theatre and ballet (Masterpieces of the World Music Theatre, The Romantics of Romance, The Big Opera, The Big Ballet). Belza has been designated the People's Artist of Russia, he was an honorable member of the Russian Academy of Arts.

Biography

Svyatoslav Belza was born in Chelyabinsk, son of a Warsaw-born Soviet musician and composer (author of four symphonies) and art scholar Igor Fyodorovjch Belza (1904—1994). His mother was Zoya Lonstantinovna Belza-Doroshuk (Gulinskaya) (1921—1999). In 1965 Belza graduated theMoscow University's philological faculty and joined the Gorky Institute of the world literature at the Russian Academy of Sciences.

In 1979-1989 Belza contributed regularly to Literaturnaya Gazeta as a foreign literature reviewer. He is the author of more than 300 essays, his specialty being foreign literature and also Russian authors' links with the European culture. Among his notable works are "Brysov and Dante" (Dante and the Slavs anthology, 1965), "Bryusov and Poland" (1966), "Don Quixotes in Russian Poetry" (1969), "The Polish Connections of P.A.Vyazemsky" (Polish-Russian Literary Relations anthology, 1970), "Graham Greene" (English Literature, 1945-1980, 1987), "Pushkin and the Slavic Nations Cultural Unity" (1988), "Dante e la poesia russa nel primo quarto del XX secolo" (from Dantismo russo e cornice europea, Firenze, 1989), "Rozanov and his Readership" (Vasilij Rozanov. Milano, 1993), "The Slovak Literature" (The History of the World Literature, Vol. 8, 1991).

Belza provided forewords and prefaces for numerous Russian publications of William Shakespeare (1975, 1988, 1996),Oscar Wilde (1987, 1989), Alexandre Dumas (1978, 1979, 1991, 1994, 1998), Honoré de Balzac (1987), Jules Verne(1989, 1997), Graham Greene (1986, 1989, 1992), C. P. Snow (1985), Edgar Allan Poe (1993, 1995), Jan Parandowski(1979, 1982, 1990, 1993), Stanislaw Lem (1991), Sławomir Mrożek (1990), Teodor Parnicki (1982), Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz(1985), and many others. Belza, a respected Shakespearean scholar, compiled and edited the legacy of another important Russian Shakespearean scholar, Mikhail Morozov (1897-1952).  In 1990 he compiled the book "The Reading Man. Homo Legens" (1983), regarded as an innovative study of the fundamental ability of the modern man, most important in the age when "play became more significant than reality". His essays are translated into several languages.

Television

In 1987 Svyatoslav Belza debuted at the Soviet television and soon got his own programme Music In the Air (Muzyka v efire, 1988-1996) of which he was the author and presenter. In 1993-1995 he worked as an art director of the Ostankinomusical and entertaintment department. In 1997 Belza started working at the Kultura TV channel. Among his best known programs were (and still are) Masterpieces of the World Theatre and In Your House. He was the co-host (alongside Maria Maksakova) of the popular Romantika Romansa show, co-presenter (with Alla Sigalova) of The Big Opera (2011) and The Big Ballet (2012).