Veniamin Smekhov

Veniamin Borisovich Smechow (Russian Вениамин Борисович Смехов, born August 10, 1940 in Moscow ) is a Russian film and theater actor, theater director, voice actor and screenwriter and children's book author.

Life

Veniamin Smechow was born on 10 August 1940 as the son of a professor and a therapist. His uncle Lew Moissejewitsch Smechow (1908-1978) was a well known book illustrator.

After the end of his school years (1947-1957) Smechow was recorded at the renowned Boris Shchukin Theatre School. 1961 he received his degree, his thesis was the role of the Covielle in Molière's " The Bourgeois Gentleman ".

From 1961 to 1962 Smechow worked at the Maxim Gorki Theater in Samara. In 1963 he transferred to the newly established Moscow theater for drama and comedy, from the 1964 emerged the Taganka Theatre. There Smechow worked until 1985. During this time he played, among others, the role of the third God in Brecht's " The Good Person of Szechwan ", the role of Claudius in Shakespeare's " Hamlet" and the role of Woland in the stage adaptation of the novel "The Master and Margarita " by Mikhail Bulgakov. From 1986 to 1987 he played at the Sovremennik Theatre and from 1988 to 1990 again at the Taganka Theater.

The broad Russian audience Smechow was known primarily in the role of Athos in the musical film " D' Artagnan and the Three Musketeers (1978 ) " and its three sequels ( 1992, 1993, 2008). Overall, he played in the years 1968-2008 in more than 20 films. He also dubbed the role of the witch Bastinda in Russian animated adaptation of " The Wizard of Oz" and the role of Admiral in the popular animated series " The adventures of captain Wrongel ".

In addition, Veniamin Smechow worked as an opera director. He staged in 1991 at the Stadttheater Aachen, committed by the former director Klaus Schultz, Prokofiev's opera "The Love for Three Oranges", in 1993 at the National Theatre Mannheim in the directorship Schultz the opera " Don Pasquale " by Gaetano Donizetti. This production in the Rococo Theatre Schwetzingen was taken over by Klaus Schultz, 1997 to the State Theatre on Gärtnerplatz after Smechov had staged there in 1996, the opera " Il Campiello " by Ermanno Wolf- Ferrari.