This is a very beautiful truly Hymn to Love !

This is the final aria from the rock-opera "Juno and Avos" (Yunona and Avos' ) by Rybnikov & Voznesensky - with English subtitles, to help wider auditory appreciate and relish the wonderful Love story and great singing and acting !


Based on actual historical events involving Count Nikolai Rezanov and his very special Love relations with Mary Concepcion "Conchita" Arguello - young daughter of then Spanish California's Comandante Arguello. Being an Orthodox christian as well as courtship person of Russian Czar, Count had to go back to obtain Czar's permission to marry a catholic woman and child of an ordinary officer. However he died on the half way back to St. Petersburg, thus neither ever achieving any of his grand plans for America, nor being able to ever meet his beloved.

Conchita (or as she also called simply Concha) has been faithful to him whole her life - waiting for confirmation of his death 35 years, and after that taking a nun ordinance and vow of silence for another 15 years till her death.

surely this kind of story in itself is already powerful enough - True Love is always rare.

however the attraction to this story and rock-opera increases with the qualities of the actors who's performed it for next 20+ years since very first premier back in 1981 !

It is 1983 version with original actors. Very powerful performance ! It was still during the Soviet time in former SU, when even word "rock" was a taboo, what to speak about such a thing as "rock-opera". previous rock-opera by Rybnikov has been denied the permission 11 times, and was not even shown yet because it wasn't allowed. therefore the very fact that this rock-opera was allowed (although under some other clever category rather than rock-opera) - it in itself was already a big progress. 1983 is 6 years before the Fall of Berlin Wall in 1989 and 9 years before the disintegration of Soviet Union in 1991 ! many things were censored out - like it wasn't allowed to use an image of Virgin Mary - instead in the list of characters was mentioned "lady with an infant". and so on... for example 20 years later in 2001 composer Rybnikov while giving an interview mentioned that raising the Czar's Naval flag on the stage (you can see it briefly in one of clips: it is white whit sky-blue diagonal cross) made them worry that it'll cause them troubles.

can also be noticed many progressive messages and ideas attempted to convey in this opera: as "find consent" hints on achieving some sort of mutual understanding, cooperation and peaceful co-existence not only between individuals but on the global scale as well, among nations engrossed in confrontation due to different political systems. attempt for reconciliation - reminding not so far away history when Russian explorers and settlers have been developing the Alaska and even traveled down south to then Spanish California and other places. idea of "Russian America" and peaceful mutually beneficial co-existence were already considered and tried back in 1806, 200 years ago - when US still in an embryo form only. the visionary Count Rezanov and others, who had the ambitions to develop trade, and even to build a bridge between Russian Far East and N. American continent (ideas widely propagated nowadays by such a prominent politicians as Lyndon LaRouche for example - 200 years later !)

and of course the main theme and message of Love is universal and timeless, saying by words from the opera itself : "There's no price for Love - only Life itself". or messages as "In the midst of quarrels and feast we've forgotten why we've come her to Earth at all" - which implies Love of course, on individual level and on larger scale as global , enviromental etc - all those things which now are so popular all over the internet.

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