anastasia 1997 journey to the past

Journey to the Past lyrics - Anastasia

• Prologue: Once Upon a December
• A Rumor in St Petersburg
• In My Dreams
• Learn to Do It
• The Neva Flows
• My Petersburg
• Once Upon a December
• A Secret She Kept
• Stay, I Pray You
• We'll Go From There

Journey to the Past

• Paris Holds the Key (To Your Heart)
• Crossing a Bridge
• Close the Door
• Land of Yesterday
• The Countess and the Common Man
• In a Crowd of Thousands
• Meant to Be
• Quartet at the Ballet
• Everything to Win
• Once Upon a December (Reprise)
• The Press Conference
• Everything to Win (Reprise)
• Still/The Neva Flows (Reprises)

Journey to the Past lyrics

• Les Miserables
• Addams Family, The
• Phantom of the Opera, The
• Jesus Christ Superstar
• Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

• Singing Voice 🎤
• Stephen Flaherty

Journey to the Past

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Anya during the "Journey to the Past" sequence.

" Journey to the Past " is the theme song from Anastasia . It's also included on the film's soundtrack.

The song was written by Lynn Ahrens , composed by Stephen Flaherty , and originally performed by Liz Callaway in her role as the singing voice of Anastasia.

A pop/R&B rendition of the song was later recorded and released as a single by late R&B recording artist, Aaliyah.

• 3 Style and Composition
• 4.1 "Reminiscing with Grandma"
• 4.2 "Finale"

"Journey to the Past" is performed by Anya shortly after she is sent away from the orphanage, following her playful encounter with Poo

ka. Prior to the song, Anya is pondering whether she should follow orders and go to the fish market, causing her to remain an unknown orphan, or follow her own path and go to St. Petersburg where there she might find a family to love her. Anya decides to travel to St. Petersburg, accompanied by Pooka. During the song, Anya is seen walking on a snow-covered pathway surrounded by a snow forest. As the song progresses, so does Anya's confidence in her decision and her enthusiasm.

The songs speaks about going on an adventure to discover who you really are, in other words, your "past". In Anya's case, the song serves as a piece motivation that encourages her to travel to St. Petersburg and possibly find her family, the truth about her past, and most imprtantly, who she is and where she came from.

Style and Composition [ ]

The musical style of "Journey to the Past" is generally a combination of traditional or orchestral pop and music theatre. It's main instruments are piano and vocals.

Other Appearances [ ]

"reminiscing with grandma" [ ].

"Journey to the Past" has few reprises in "Reminiscing with Grandma".

"Finale" [ ]

"Journey to the Past" seems to be a main melody for "Finale".

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‘Journey to the Past’ Carries ‘Anastasia’ to the Present

By Rachel Syme

• April 20, 2017

It was the “Let It Go” of the ’90s, the inescapable ear worm that leapt from an animated film to the radio charts to international concert halls and, ultimately, to the stage of the Academy Awards. Now, 20 years later, “Journey to the Past” is back. And this time, the song is on Broadway.

On Monday, April 24, “Anastasia,” a new musical based on the hit 1997 animated feature about the adventures of Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna, the youngest Romanov princess, will open at the Broadhurst Theater. The movie — one of several retellings of the legend, including a 1956 Ingrid Bergman film of the same name — put forth a fanciful, if not historically accurate, premise: What if Anastasia had not been murdered in the Bolshevik Revolution along with her four siblings in 1918, but instead had survived with a touch of amnesia?

In the film opening’s scene, the princess, who goes by Anya after forgetting her identity, leaves an orphanage outside St. Petersburg in search of her grandmother, who survived the revolution. She has only fuzzy memories, of gilded palaces and a jeweled music box. Trudging through the snow, she sings “Journey to the Past,” a number at once twinkling and rousing, about moving forward by diving into history.

The song, with music by Stephen Flaherty and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, who have teamed up again to update the tale for Broadway, became the breakout track from the film , where it was sung by Liz Callaway and earned an Oscar nomination.

That and a radio version by the teenage R&B star Aaliyah set it on a course to global omnipresence. The song has been dubbed in more than 31 languages for the film’s international versions, with various countries’ ingénues giving voice to Anya: In Mexico, the pop star Thalía released a cover; in Norway, Anita Skorgan, a Eurovision Song Contest veteran, added her own flair; in Portugal, Lúcia Moniz (best known as Colin Firth’s romantic interest in “Love Actually”) recorded it as “Regresso ao passado,” or “Return to the Past.”

The song’s runaway success shocked its composers. “We had another song for that scene,” said Mr. Flaherty, sitting with Ms. Ahrens at a cafe near the Broadhurst. “In the other song, Anya was on a bicycle. But, in Hollywood, you always have to write three songs for every scene. ‘Journey’ was the last one we came up with, late at night.”

At the Oscars, it lost to “My Heart Will Go On” from “Titanic,” which, Mr. Flaherty sighed, “was No. 1 all around the world that week. Though hope springs eternal, and we thought we might have a chance.”

Ms. Ahrens laughed, and added: “My mother, who I call the pinprick in the bubble of joy, said it’s an honor just to be nominated. What she meant was, you’re going to lose.”

Still, Aaliyah’s performance on the telecast, in a black evening gown, is a lasting cultural moment, especially given her death in a 2001 plane crash. She also appeared in the official music video for the song, frolicking through animated snowscapes in a furry beige jump suit with a matching floor-length mink coat.

“She was so lovely to work with,” Mr. Flaherty said of Aaliyah. “The morning we were nominated, we got a call from her. No one ever thanks the songwriters, but she did. I will always remember that.”

Though Aaliyah made the song popular on radio, the version that most fans cling to was sung by Ms. Callaway, a Broadway regular who was originally hired to sing only the demo tapes for the film but won the job after studio executives became enchanted with her voice. Ms. Callaway said that she still recalls the moment Mr. Flaherty played it for her.

“I thought, ‘That’s the song,’” Ms. Callaway said. “ I wanted to record it that same night. We stayed up until 1 in the morning, and no one left until it was done.”

Christy Altomare, who plays Anya on Broadway, said she had a similar moment of late-night communion. When recording the cast album, she asked to sing “Journey to the Past” last, so that she could “walk out into the streets of New York having just sung it,” she explained. “There is an energy to those last 32 bars that is indescribable — the hopefulness, the longing.”

The “Anastasia” creative team, which includes the book writer Terrence McNally and the director Darko Tresnjak, is banking on the song’s appeal to fill seats. So far it may be working: In a recent week, the show brought in $1.2 million at the box office, a healthy haul before its official opening.

Promotional materials, including a teaser trailer that amassed over 12 million views on Facebook, all feature the twinkling opening bars of “Journey to the Past,” a kind of instant aural nostalgia trip designed for maximum throwback swooning. (Ms. Ahrens calls it the “shimmer.”)

“I’ve imagined this for YEARS!” one fan wrote under the YouTube video. Another: “I’m crying right now, this is my childhood! I wish I could go, but is really hard because I live in Argentina.”

Svala Bjorgvinsdottir, an Icelandic singer and the daughter of the Reykjavik rock star Bjorgvin Halldorsson, recorded the song when she was 18 and already famous in her home country. Twenty years on, she still performs it “in big arena concerts all over Iceland, including my father’s Christmas Stadium Gala,” she said by email. “The lyrics are beautiful in Icelandic.”

Ms. Callaway , too, said she is constantly surprised by the fervor. She included the song on her 2015 album, “The Essential Liz Callaway,” and still performs it live dozens of times every year.

“I’ve sung it in China, I’ve sung it in France, and everyone knows this song,” she said. “I have had people burst into tears when they hear me sing it, saying it is their childhood rushing back to them.”

Caroline Benson, 23, a self-described “Anastasia superfan” currently studying musical theater at Auburn University, said that she views “Journey” as a kind of empowerment anthem for women.

“My mom bought me the VHS when I was about 6,” she said. “I always appreciated Anya as a strong feminist character who knew what she wanted and never took no for an answer. As a person who is in a transition period, this song really speaks to going out into the unknown and taking life by the horns.”

While the composers are grateful for the “Fanastasias” who express affection for the movie, they worry that the stage version could shock the most devoted among them. Gone on Broadway are Rasputin — the villain of the film — and Bartok the albino bat, his scheming animal sidekick.

The story still centers on Anya and her love interest, Dmitry (Derek Klena), a ruffian from St. Petersburg who persuades her to pretend to be Romanov royalty to escape Russia and find riches in Paris. (Surprise: She was the princess all along!) The main villain is a stern revolutionary named Gleb (Ramin Karimloo), who pursues Anya across Europe out of a sense of patriotism.

Mr. Flaherty and Ms. Ahrens made other changes, too, adding many new songs. And — gasp — they moved “Journey to the Past” from its place at the start of the film to the finale of the musical’s first act.

“A song like ‘Journey,’ even though it dealt with indecision, couldn’t be the start of a character arc,” Mr. Flaherty said. “This is a woman with a past, and we needed to lay the groundwork for this moment.”

Mr. Flaherty and Ms. Ahrens say they are flattered that new generations continue to find the song. “A British boy group called Collabro just put a cover of it on their latest record,” Mr. Flaherty said. “It keeps popping up in the strangest places.”

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Broadway’s Anastasia Sings ‘Journey to the Past’

Anastasia is coming to Broadway, and while the albino bat may have gone the way of Anastasia’s childhood memories, “Journey to the Past” had no problem making the cut. The Oscar-nominated song is among the 1997 movie’s most memorable, and it’s the first number from the stage adaptation to properly debut. Christy Altomare steps into Meg Ryan’s dainty shoes to bring the Russian princess to the Great White Way, performing the song full out. It’s sung without the elaborate staging it’ll have when Anastasia properly debuts on Broadway in April, not that you were really looking through your eyes-closed, lungs-gaping, heart-bursting singalong anyways.

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Reviews from Broadway and Beyond

Anastasia: Journey to the Musical Past

By Bob Verini

★★★★☆ Long-Run Lookback: McNally, Ahrens and Flaherty ransack the operetta playbook, with pleasing results

To enjoy Anastasia —and I did enjoy it, quite a lot—you can’t expect it to be what it isn’t. It’s far from the serious-minded musical currently in vogue: consistent in tone, thematically focused and boasting the sound of today. Instead, as if cued by act one closer “Journey to the Past,” it’s a deliberate throwback to a bygone era. Virtually nothing in Terrence McNally’s lean libretto, or Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty’s lush score, couldn’t have been seen (or wouldn’t have been lauded) in the late 1920’s, when Anastasia is set. Buffs, who’ll recall Anya told in haut-floperetta style for two weeks in 1965, can readily identify elements of the light opera playbook followed by Naughty Marietta and The Merry Widow. (Scoff if you must, but those were crowd-pleasers in their day, as this show has been in its.)

And you can’t honestly deem it a fairy tale. Fairy tales take place in mythical realms of magic, whereas Anastasia is set against real-life events. And what tumultuous events they are: Imperial excess in its last gasps; the Czar’s family murdered; civil war; survivors plotting in Jazz Age Paris. As in previous versions—the Marcelle Maurette-Guy Bolton play whose film brought Ingrid Bergman an Oscar, and the animated reworking that led to the attraction at hand—there’s plenty Romanov bling available to anyone who can establish a plausible claim. Which inspires some enterprising con men to make over an amnesiac peasant girl (Christy Altomare) in the image of the titular rumored massacre survivor, enough at least to persuade the grandmother (Judy Kaye, newly replacing Mary Beth Peil) to hand over the keys.

That’s the story, but how it’s told is what matters. Because McNally is in essence writing an operetta libretto, downtrodden Dmitry (Zach Adkins, a fresh, charismatic new talent) has more at stake than wealth in his burgeoning romance with the confused Anya (Altomare striking a nice balance between neurosis and Broadway-heroine perkiness). They’re of the same hardscrabble world, but she may be of a different world, so there are problems but ah! Love will conquer all….if you catch my drift. Sidekick Vlad (John Bolton), besotted by Imperial Court memories, is motivated mostly by flirtation with Countess Lily (Lauren Blackman in for Vicki Lewis at the performance caught). Bolton and Blackman’s amusing turns reveal their characters have little interest in making a killing.

Gleb, however, does want to make a killing: He’s a current commissar deputized to finish the job on this reputed rescued Romanov, who strangely rattles his Marxist-Leninist sangfroid. High-stakes villains torn between duty and passion frequently haunted operettas, and ever-reliable Max von Essen plays this one to the hilt and, but for one wince-inducing moment permitted by director Darko Tresnjak, without camp.

There’s your lineup, light opera fans, and let’s not forget the waltzes. Lots and lots of waltzes from Peggy Hickey, some in flashback from old St. Petersburg, all eye-popping in Linda Cho’s extravagant costumes. And as lit by Donald Holder, Alexander Dodge’s elegant marble framing of Aaron Rhyne’s Drama Desk Award-winning projections—4K-clear vistas of Petersburg and Paris, and a thrilling ride on a moving train—pops whatever eyes are left to pop after Cho’s gowns have flitted by.

So Anastasia sends you, if you let yourself be sent, off on a cascade of melody and visual splendor. Just don’t think about it all too much. Let it go that they insist on pronouncing the heroine’s name with an Americanized long A and middle “zh,” instead of the short A and soft “s” that would gibe with the show’s Old World qualities. (Don’t even get me started on how they mangle “Nikolaevna.”) Ignore the rejection of the broken-hearted cry “Malenkaia” when Nana recognizes her granddaughter, in favor of the 1,368th invocation of “Anastasia!” (Kaye, sharp and sturdy as always, could have knocked a “Malenkaia” out of the park.)

And I wouldn’t fret about the taste choices in using the Russian Revolution, its causes and outcomes, as the backdrop for love story. Operetta always sees the real world through romantic mists lit by dim embers. Friml, Romberg, Victor Herbert and now Ahrens and Flaherty adapt John Ford’s old adage to their Great White Way purpose. When the legend becomes fact, stage the legend.

Anastasia  opened April 24, 2017, at the Broadhurst Theatre. Reviewed: October, 2018.  Tickets and information:  anastasiathemusical.com

About Bob Verini

Bob Verini covers the Massachusetts theater scene for Variety . From 2006 to 2015 he covered Southern California theater for Variety , serving as president of the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle. He has written for American Theatre , ArtsInLA.com, StageRaw.com, and Script .

French Open 2024 women's final odds: Iga Swiatek vs Jasmine Paolini marks most one-sided women's Grand Slam final in history

A s anticipation builds for Iga Swiatek and Jasmine Paolini's blockbuster title clash at the 2024 French Open, the World No. 1 has unsurprisingly emerged as the oddsmakers' leading choice to achieve the hat-trick at the claycourt Major. However, the astronomical odds in Swiatek's favor mark the most lopsided women's Grand Slam final in history.

Swiatek commenced her Roland Garros campaign with a clinical 6-1, 6-2 win over Leolia Jeanjean. After a narrow escape against Naomi Osaka in the second round, the Pole displayed her characteristic dominance, beating Marie Bouzkova, Anastasia Potapova and Marketa Vondrousova in straight sets.

The World No. 1 then breezed past Coco Gauff 6-2, 6-4 to reach her third consecutive French Open final. Jasmine Paolini booked her place against the two-time defending champion with a 6-3, 6-1 win over Mirra Andreeva.

After winning her maiden WTA 1000 title at the Dubai Tennis Championships this season, Paolini has reached new heights in her career by reaching her first Grand Slam final.

The 28-year-old triumphed over the likes of Daria Saville, Hailey Baptiste, Bianca Andreescu and Elina Avanesyan before pulling off a stunning 6-2, 4-6, 6-4 upset over fourth seed Elena Rybakina in the quarterfinals.

Iga Swiatek enjoys a 2-0 lead in her head-to-head record against Paolini, claiming a 6-3, 6-0 victory in their most recent meeting in the first round of the 2022 US Open.

Given Swiatek's dominance at the French Open, her winning record against Jasmine Paolini and the Italian's inexperience in Major finals, the four-time Grand Slam champion is the -1660 (1.06) favorite on the moneyline. Paolini, meanwhile, enters the contest as the underdog with +900 (10.0) odds of winning her maiden Major title.

According to analyst Juan Ignacio, the final between Iga Swiatek and Jasmine Paolini represents the most one-sided women's Grand Slam final since the records began in 1990, as per SportsOddsHistory.com.

It has surpassed the 1997 US Open final, where eventual champion Martina Hingis enjoyed -800 (1.12) odds of beating Venus Williams .

"Checking via @SOHistory, tomorrow's is indeed the most lopsided women's Grand Slam final in history (since records exist, 1990)," Ignacio posted on X (formerly Twitter).

Comparitively, although Karolina Muchova's surprising journey to the 2023 French Open final resembled Jasmine Paolini's run, the Czech had +525 (6.25) odds of clinching the title against Iga Swiatek, who entered the title clash with -700 (1.14) odds.

French Open 2024 final: Iga Swiatek on the hunt for fifth Grand Slam title; Jasmine Paolini seeks maiden Major crown

The stakes are high as Iga Swiatek and Jasmine Paolini gear up to contest the 2024 French Open final. Swiatek enters the clash as the two-time defending champion, on the hunt for her fourth crown at Roland Garros.

Moreover, the Pole is aiming to break her tie with fellow four-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka and become the player with the most Major titles under 30.

Paolini, meanwhile, has the chance to win her maiden Major title and make history as the first Italian women's Grand Slam champion since Flavia Pennetta's triumph at the 2015 US Open.