Afanasyev — The Frog Princess
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
Three brothers shoot their arrows, and each must marry where his arrow falls. The eldest wins a prince's daughter, the second a general's — but the youngest, Ivan-tsarevich, finds his arrow in a swamp, in the teeth of a frog, and the frog will give it back only for a wedding. Yet by night the frog casts off her skin, and the tsar's tests keep turning out beyond all craft: a shirt fit for Easter Day, a loaf with tsars' cities along its sides, and a dance at the ball that conjures forests, waters, and white swans. Afanasyev's collection preserves the tale in three tellings, and this episode reads them all — the Shadrinsk telling of Elena the Beautiful and the flying carpet; the short telling of the iron boots, the spared pike, bear, falcon, and crayfish, and the egg baked into a cake; and the fullest telling, of Vasilisa the Wise, held beyond thrice-nine lands by Koschei the Deathless.
The Frog Princess (Царевна-лягушка) — from the collection of Alexander Afanasyev, in a new English translation made for this show, read aloud over a gentle instrumental bed.
Afanasyev.
Intermission: "upload-11" — instrumental.
KacheliTV — Russian classics, read aloud.
