Russian Tsar Era Classics — Lefty, by Nikolai Leskov (The Tale of the Cross-Eyed Lefty from Tula and the Steel Flea)
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
The premiere of a new KacheliTV shelf — Russian Tsar Era Classics. Nikolai Leskov's beloved tale of the cross-eyed Lefty from Tula who shod an English steel flea, told complete in a multi-voice dramatized performance.
In this episode:
00:00 — Opening theme and introduction
1:01 — Chapter One
4:17 — Chapter Two
9:24 — Chapter Three
19:10 — Chapter Four
24:23 — Chapter Five
27:41 — Chapter Six
29:59 — Chapter Seven
34:40 — Chapter Eight
36:47 — Chapter Nine
39:41 — Chapter Ten
43:53 — Chapter Eleven
46:23 — Chapter Twelve
49:19 — Chapter Thirteen
53:25 — Chapter Fourteen
56:32 — Chapter Fifteen
1:07:22 — Chapter Sixteen
1:14:02 — Chapter Seventeen
1:16:06 — Chapter Eighteen
1:19:36 — Chapter Nineteen
1:23:30 — Chapter Twenty
The complete tale is told here — all twenty chapters, nothing cut and nothing softened, exactly as Leskov wrote it in 1881: including Platov's roughness with the Lefty, the drinking wager at sea, and the Lefty's death through neglect at the end.
Performed by the KacheliTV cast — narrated by Bruno; Scratch as the Lefty; Orson as General Platov; Felix as the Emperor Alexander and the minor officials; Silas as the Emperor Nicholas; Benedetto as the English hosts; Amos as the English half-skipper; Magnolia as the Empress Elizabeth.
Music: "The Friend's Cello" — it opens the episode, returns briefly between the chapters, and closes it; the performance itself is heard over silence, with no music under the words. Sound effects are real recordings from a licensed library, credited as follows: "Music box notes 1.ogg" by Luisalvaz, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0); "WWS Mechanicalspringhammersmaller.ogg" by Work With Sounds / Technical Museum of Slovenia, licensed CC BY 4.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0); "WWS Clatterof Horseshoesonthepavement.ogg" by Work With Sounds / Museum of Municipal Engineering, licensed CC BY 4.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0); "WWS Smallwaves.ogg" by Work With Sounds / Torsten Nilsson, licensed CC BY 4.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0). Further effects are public-domain and CC0 recordings via Wikimedia Commons.
"Levsha" (The Tale of the Cross-Eyed Lefty from Tula and the Steel Flea) by Nikolai Semyonovich Leskov (1831–1895), first published in 1881 — public domain. Fresh English translation made in-house for KacheliTV from the Russian text at ilibrary.ru. An original tipping disclosure in our own words plays inside this episode, at a random position, in one of our own voices.
KacheliTV — the world's classics and folk tales in English, gathered tale by tale into one library.
