Turkomania

He covers Asiatic Russia, the absorption of Siberia, the conquest of the Khanates, the taking of Turkomania, the partition of Persia, Russian policy in Asia, the march on India, Russia in China, conquest by railway, Russia and England face to face, the theory of a buffer state, the secret of success, and the outlook.

As if all this-with an interminable subplot involving Almaviva's illegitimate child and a rascally revolutionary Begearss (sung to no avail by the formidably capable English tenor Graham Clark)were not enough, there is an interpolated scene near the middle designed to show eighteenth-century "Turkomania." Here we get Marilyn Horne as Samira, the Ottoman pasha's favorite singer, who disports herself in a disgracefully idiotic caricature of not Turkish but Arabic music, with poorly written and pronounced Arabic words as her text.