I only now saw it with the speakers on. The first song is this one. The other two are sung by this man, whose voice was a huge part of the “soundtrack” of my childhood (please ignore the rather daft comparison to Crosby and Sinatra, their unquestionable greatness aside). The last song is this one (scroll down to the revised translation + transliteration). The second is my all time favorite (and most likely not only mine). It is called Dark Night, here’s my feeble attempt at something I almost never do, not being a poet myself:

Dark night, only bullets
are whistling across the prairie,
Only the wind is humming along the wires,
And the stars are blinking dimly.
On this dark night I know you are not asleep, my love,
You are by the crib, wiping a tear.

How I love the depth of you sweet eyes,
How I wish I could press my lips against them.
Dark night is dividing us, my love,
And the troubled black prairie lay between us.

My faith is in you, my dear friend,
This faith has kept the bullet away on a dark night.
I am happy and calm in a mortal fight,
Since I know you will greet me with love, no matter what.

Death doesn’t scare me, we faced it in the prairie before,
Here it is, hovering above me right now.
You are waiting for me, sleepless by the crib,
And that is why I know that I am safe from harm.

The preview shows weird formatting – please ignore it if it shows.

It was the song(s) in Russian that seemed to have such a profound effect on the audience. Wish I knew what the lyrics were.

If I may say so… even though I am not Russian, I used to be fluent in Russian, and long ago lived with Russians and watched/read enough to have some measure of appreciation of how much more moving this performance would be to a Russian audience than to us. Hat off to young Ms. Simonova (although I suspect her original name might be Semyonova).

I thought I heard “Bravo!” rather than “Brava!” from the audience. Despite the “o” sound as in and presumably influenced by Italian, the Russian appears to be an adverbial rather than adjectival form; this and, per Dal’, the French (intermediary) borrowing would explain the apparent substandard usage.

The final was worth watching, too. But it would have been nice to know the story behind the baby Anastasia (?; Nasten’ka?), for whom Simonova urged help, um, ensconced in the video.

If this Rolf Harris is the one mentioned above, it’s not clear what he might have said better. At least I can’t tell what he might have said yet.

There was a children’s show host in Philly years ago who told stories while drawing swiftly on an easel. Sand painting would lend itself equally well to the telling of fairy tales and other children’s stories, and as a like centerpiece of a children’s show, could help raise children’s entertainment well above the level of decades of brain-scrambling pabulum like Howdy Doody, Romper Room, or Sesame Street. At least this seems to be where Simonova’s heart lies. But I suppose it’d be a niche market in the US.